Three AI Companies Founded by Post90s Generation Valued at 36 Billion

AI Funding Wave Sweeps the Globe
Recently, according to Reuters, the AI unicorn Coherence, founded by the bright young minds from NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, and Cisco, has raised a staggering $450 million in funding, reaching a valuation of $5 billion (approximately 36 billion RMB), which is truly awe-inspiring.
It may be hard to believe, but the core founder is none other than a member of Gen Z – Aidan Gomez, who is also one of the renowned authors of the landmark AI paper “Attention is All You Need”. At this year’s NVIDIA GTC conference, he was invited by Huang Renxun to participate in a roundtable discussion as a guest.


From left to right: Ivan Zhang, Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst
Since 2019, Aidan Gomez, along with his two fellow Gen Z alumni, Ivan Zhang and Nick Frosst, have embarked on the journey of founding Coherence, diving headfirst into the AI entrepreneurship wave. Their fearless attitude in the face of challenges undoubtedly epitomizes the potential for wealth creation in the realm of AI, showcasing a group of young entrepreneurs leading the largest AI startup wave in history.
Huang Renxun’s Distinguished Guests
Three Gen Z Founders Creating a Super Unicorn
The story of Coherence began with three young individuals.
In 1995, Aidan Gomez was born in a forested village in Ontario, Canada. Surrounded by lush greenery and pristine landscapes, he found solace in the world of computers due to the lack of internet connectivity, sparking his interest in programming.
In 2013, Aidan enrolled in the University of Toronto to pursue a degree in computer science, later pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Oxford. During this time, he extensively studied the academic papers of AI luminary and Turing Award winner, Geoffrey Hinton, even critiquing them in detail, showing no fear in the face of challenges.
A pivotal moment in his life came in 2017 when the 20-year-old Aidan, during his internship at Google Brain, co-authored the famous paper “Attention is All You Need” with seven other researchers, introducing the Transformer architecture for the first time, which later became the underlying architecture for ChatGPT and other large models.
However, the birth of the Transformer did not create much of a ripple at the time. Aidan witnessed the widespread adoption of the Transformer architecture within Google, leading to incredible transformations. Yet, outside of Google, few utilized Transformer to build applications. This inspired him to venture into entrepreneurship.
Coincidentally, Aidan met Ivan Zhang, a Chinese entrepreneur who had dropped out of the University of Toronto to start his own business. Ivan was a staunch advocate of practical technology, and the two quickly formed a partnership. In 2019, Coherence was born, focusing on applications of AI large models.
In 2020, another co-founder and Chief Scientist, Nick Frosst, joined the team. Nick, also a graduate of the University of Toronto’s computer science program, was a former member of the Hinton team at Google Brain. With this, the trio of Gen Z founders was complete.
With a deep understanding of the underlying technology of large models, Aidan adopted a differentiated competitive strategy in entrepreneurship, steering clear of the saturated “ChatGPT-like” path and instead focusing on leveraging the capabilities of large models to serve enterprise clients, all while designing tailored payment models.
It is this unique strategy that has allowed Coherence to carve out a niche in the competitive AI landscape. According to reports, Coherence has already partnered with companies like Jasper, HyperWrite, and Salesforce, with revenues reaching $35 million by the end of March this year, showcasing an impressive growth trajectory.
At this year’s NVIDIA GTC conference, the eight authors of the early paper reunited, and Aidan Gomez was invited to join as one of Huang Renxun’s distinguished guests. In its inaugural list of the top 100 AI figures globally, Time magazine also featured Aidan Gomez among the ranks.
A Round of Funding Each Year, Valuation at $36 Billion
The funding journey of Coherence has left a profound impression on the venture capital industry.
Thanks to Aidan’s academic background, the company received early support from industry giants, including Turing Award winner Geoffrey Hinton, GAN creator Ian Goodfellow, Uber’s Chief Scientist Raquel Urtasun, NVIDIA Toronto Research Lab Director Sanja Fidler, and Stanford Professor Fei-Fei Li, among others. These individuals are considered influential figures in the AI world today.
With the endorsement of industry leaders, Coherence’s funding pace has been smooth, maintaining a round of funding each year. In September 2021, Coherence completed a $40 million Series A funding round led by Index Ventures, Section 32, Radical Ventures, and several individual investors.
Six months later, in February 2022, Coherence secured a $125 million Series B funding round, with Tiger Global leading the investment, and follow-on investments from Radical Ventures, Index Ventures, and Section 32.
In May 2023, Coherence announced the completion of a $270 million Series C funding round, with an even more impressive lineup – led by Inovia Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, Oracle, Salesforce, Index Ventures, DTCP, Mirae Asset, Schroders Capital, SentinelOne, Thomvest Ventures, and Future Fund Group of Korea, among others. This latest round brought the total funding of the company to approximately $445 million, ranking it just below OpenAI and Anthropic in terms of funding.
With this latest funding round, Coherence’s valuation has surpassed $5 billion.
The latest development sees Coherence once again securing $450 million in funding from investors such as NVIDIA, Salesforce, and Cisco, pushing its valuation to an astonishing $50 billion, a remarkable feat.
A Yearly Funding Round, Valued at $50 Billion
This scene is not unfamiliar. Looking around, Gen Z is leading an unprecedented AI entrepreneurship wave.
Behind every significant AI funding announcement this year, one can almost always find a group of young, brilliant founders from Gen Z. Just last month, Scale AI announced a $1 billion funding round, valuing the company at $13.8 billion, with 95ers Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo standing behind it. For more details, refer to the previous Silicon Rabbit article: A 1997 MIT dropout, now a $7.3 billion unicorn.
Similarly, this week, the AI-generated video software Pika completed an $80 million Series B funding round, led by Spark Capital, with participation from Greycroft, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Jared Leto, valuing the company at over $470 million, with 95er Guo Wenjing in the background.
Guo Wenjing, the first Zhejiang native admitted to Harvard College ahead of schedule, went on to earn a master’s degree in computer science and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Harvard, followed by a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Last April, Guo Wenjing and several classmates dropped out of Stanford to develop Pika, which quickly gained global popularity.
Across the landscape of AI entrepreneurship in China, the younger generation is making a strong impact.
Not long ago, the latest round of funding for the Chinese AI large model star company, Moon’s Dark Side, was revealed, with a valuation reaching $3 billion, led by the brilliant Tsinghua Gen Z scholar Yang Zhilin. Growing up in Shantou, Guangdong, Yang Zhilin was admitted to Tsinghua University after graduating from high school, later pursuing a Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University. In the past year, Moon’s Dark Side has become a fiercely contested project in the field of large models.
Another notable figure is the former Huawei “young genius” Zhi Huijun Peng Zhihui. Graduating with a bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Electronic Science and Technology, he is also a Bilibili up-and-coming star with 2.5 million followers. He founded Zhiyuan Robot, focusing on embodied intelligence. Since its establishment in February 2023, Zhiyuan Robot has been on a rapid fundraising spree, making waves wherever it goes.
There are many more Gen Z AI founders emerging – Zhang Yueguang, the product manager of the popular AI product “Wonderful Duck,” founded Muyan Zhiyu, which has completed multiple funding rounds within six months. This 90s graduate of Tsinghua University; Jiang Yuchen, CEO of Waveform Intelligence, born in 1998, graduated from Zhejiang University, and obtained a Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, specializing in natural language processing. Her Hangzhou Waveform Intelligence recently received a pre-A round of funding led by Lan Chi Venture, with follow-on investments from West Lake Science and Technology Venture Capital, and existing investor Oufang Angel.
The list goes on – Zeng Guoyang of Mianbi Intelligence, Hu Yuanming of Taiji Graphics, Tian of Ruilai Wisdom, Chen Jianyu of Xingdong Jiayuan… Most of them have top-notch scientific and engineering backgrounds from China and even the world’s leading universities, riding the wave of artificial intelligence to become the darlings of the era. In response, Hua Chuang Capital summarized the characteristics of this wave of founders:
Firstly, they have outstanding academic backgrounds, mostly in computer science, artificial intelligence, or related fields from top universities at home and abroad, with rich research resources and internship experiences at big tech companies;
Secondly, they prioritize research and development over team size, requiring only a few people to build a complete team for development and implementation, enabling a quick start;
Thirdly, generative AI is seen as a significant paradigm shift, with young people having strong faith in technological innovation and Jobs-style entrepreneurship.
This world will always belong to the young. Countless graduates from prestigious universities are now leaving their mark on the world with the latest technology, collectively creating a grand scene of the flourishing AI entrepreneurship era.