HONG KONG/BEIJING, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup Baichuan has raised $300 million from investors including Chinese tech giants Alibaba (9988.HK) and Tencent (0700.HK), it said on Tuesday. The company said on its WeChat account that the round followed an early $50 million angel round. China's craze over generative AI has triggered a flurry of product and fundraising announcements from startups and tech giants, as the industry races to find a homegrown rival to Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT. Shunwei Capital, a venture capital firm chaired by Xiaomi's chief executive Lei Jun, participated in the capital raise, according to a source familiar with the matter. Baidu (9888.HK) on Tuesday unveiled the newest version of its generative AI model, Ernie 4.0, saying its capabilities were on par with OpenAI's pioneering GPT-4 model, but analysts cautioned the launch lacked major highlights versus the previous version.

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Persons: Wang Xiaochuan, Baichuan, Lei Jun, Shunwei, Ernie, Josh Ye, Roxanne Liu, Jason Neely, Emelia Organizations: HK, Microsoft, Shunwei, Baidu, Thomson Locations: HONG KONG, BEIJING, Hong Kong, Beijing