Woofun AI reports that Tian Keyu, first author of the NeurIPS 2024 Best Paper, has joined a World Model startup. The project was incubated and funded by Meng Xing, a partner at Five Source Capital, securing tens of millions of dollars in funding with a valuation of approximately $200 million.

Business records indicate Tian Keyu established multiple AI entities in Beijing this year, including Beijing Blue Carbon Network Technology Co., Ltd., where he holds a 60% stake. The company focuses on AI hardware, intelligent robots, and R&D, with a registered capital of $1.9 million. Tian previously interned at ByteDance, which sued him in 2024 for code tampering and model training attacks, seeking 8.02 million yuan in damages. The court accepted the case, but no public judgment exists yet. Tian’s VAR image generation framework won the NeurIPS 2024 Best Paper, claiming superiority over Diffusion Transformer in quality, speed, and efficiency.