AI video start-up Pika Labs sparks rally in stock of Chinese company helmed by father of co-founder, a Stanford dropout
- Demi Guo, co-founder of Pika Labs, is the daughter of Guo Huaqiang, former chairman of Hangzhou-based IT services company Sunyard Technology
- Sunyard, which denies business ties with Pika Labs, has seen its shares rise more than 20 per cent this week as the start-up launches its new model
US artificial intelligence (AI) video generator start-up Pika Labs has become the latest sensation in China’s tech community, after its co-founder Demi Guo was identified as a native of Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province, and daughter of former Sunyard Technology chairman Guo Huaqiang.
While Silicon Valley-based Pika Labs, co-founded in April by Guo and her Stanford University classmate Meng Chenlin, is situated on the other side of the Pacific, its sudden fame has set off a rush by Chinese investors to buy the stock of information technology services firm Sunyard, where the elder Guo remains the largest stakeholder.
The surprise surge in Sunyard’s shares, which have risen more than 21 per cent this week, prompted the company to file a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange to clarify that Sunyard has no business ties with, nor investments, in Pika Labs.
The Pika 1.0 video-generating AI model, launched on Tuesday, is designed to generate and edit videos in a wide range of formats – from cartoons to realistic cinematic content – based on simple text prompts such as “Elon Musk in a spacesuit, 3D animation”.
“Our vision for Pika is to enable everyone to be the director of their own stories and to bring out the creator in each of us,” the company said in a post announcing the release of the model.