In 2012, Ji launched his personal firm, Peak Labs, and later led the event of Magi, a search engine. The device extracted data from throughout the online to reply queries—conceptually much like in the present day’s AI-powered search, however powered by a customized language mannequin.
Magi was briefly well-liked, drawing thousands and thousands of customers in its first month, however client adoption didn’t stick. It did, nevertheless, entice enterprise curiosity, and Ji tailored it for B2B use, earlier than promoting it in 2022.
AI acumen
Manus would develop into his subsequent act—and a extra bold one. His cofounders, Zhang Tao and Xiao Hong, complement Ji’s technical core with product know-how, storytelling, and organizational savvy. Each Xiao and Ji are serial entrepreneurs who’ve been backed by enterprise capital agency ZhenFund a number of instances. Collectively, they characterize the sort of long-term collaboration and worldwide ambition that more and more defines China’s subsequent wave of entrepreneurs.
JULIANA TAN
Individuals who have labored with Ji describe him as a transparent thinker, a quick talker, and a tireless, deeply dedicated builder who thinks in programs, merchandise, and person flows. He represents a brand new era of Chinese language technologists: equally at dwelling coding or in pitch conferences, fluent in each constructing and branding. He’s additionally a product of open-source tradition, and stays an lively contributor whose initiatives usually garner consideration—and GitHub stars—throughout developer communities.
With new funding led by US enterprise capital agency Benchmark, Ji and his workforce are taking Manus to the broader world, relocating operations outdoors of China, to Singapore, and actively concentrating on shoppers world wide. The product is constructed on US-based infrastructure, drawing on applied sciences like Claude Sonnet, Microsoft Azure, and open-source instruments reminiscent of Browser Use. It’s a distinctly international setup: an AI agent developed by a Chinese language workforce, powered by Western platforms, and designed for worldwide customers. That isn’t incidental; it displays the extra fluid nature of AI entrepreneurship in the present day, the place expertise, infrastructure, and ambition transfer throughout borders simply as shortly because the expertise itself.
For Ji, the aim isn’t simply constructing a worldwide firm—it’s constructing a legacy. “I hope Manus is the final product I’ll ever construct,” Ji says. “As a result of if I ever have one other wild concept—(I’ll simply) go away it to Manus!”
