Chinese technology giants including Alibaba and Tencent are among backers of Zhipu, the company said on Friday, an artificial intelligence start-up the country is hoping can be an answer to American firm OpenAI.

According to a statement, Zhipu raised more than 2.5 billion Chinese yuan ($341 million) this year.

A number of high-profile venture backers, including Sequoia and Hillhouse, have invested in Xiaomi, while Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi are among the corporate investors.

In addition to building AI models that can support a variety of applications, Zhipu is one of China’s promising start-ups that creates AI models based on huge amounts of data. A generative AI chatbot based on Zhipu’s models was released in August. Artificial intelligence that generates answers in response to user commands is known as generative AI.

AI chatbot ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, the U.S. firm that brought the technology to the masses.

With artificial intelligence front and center in the technology battle between the United States and China, Zhipu’s statement about its investors is timely.

A key technology China wants to develop is artificial intelligence, especially since it has the potential to boost economic output. In addition to increasing its computing power by 50% by 2025, the world’s second-largest economy plans to continue developing AI applications.

There are a number of Chinese startups working to grow the country’s AI industry, including Zhipu. Chinese technology giants are backing many of these startups.

Another AI startup, Baichuan, raised $300 million from investors such as Alibaba and Tencent this week.

At the same time, Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu are all developing their own AI models and releasing products based on it.