(Yicai Global) June 15 -- Kunlun Tech’s shares closed little changed after jumping by as much as 8 percent in the wake of an announcement by the Chinese mobile gaming platform operator that it will spend USD160 million to acquire the firm it is working with to develop a ChatGPT-like large language model.

Kunlun Tech [SHE: 300418] closed up 0.1 percent at CNY55.68 (USD7.78) in Shanghai today. The stock has skyrocketed 286 percent this year amid the Beijing-based firm's ongoing development of ChatGPT-like products.

Kunlun Tech's holding unit Star Group Interactive will issue new shares to two shareholders of Singularity AI Technology to acquire all of its equity, it said late yesterday. Kulun Tech will then increase SGI’s capital by USD400 million, sparing no effort in developing artificial intelligence technology, it added.

Once the transactions are completed, the combined stake owned by Kunlun Tech and two of its subsidiaries in SGI will be diluted to 75 percent from 80 percent, while shareholders from Singularity AI will have a 15.4 percent stake, the firm noted.

The acquisition and capital increase will help Kunlun Tech to speed up the iteration and upgrade of its LLM Tiangong 3.5 and aid the firm in applying AI technology in other businesses, including search engines, games, music, anime, and social media, it said.

Kunlun Tech will also assist in the research, development, and commercialization of AI-based music and gaming products, it added. 

Jointly developed with Singularity AI to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT and open for user testing in April, Tiangong 3.5 can handle smart questions and answers, chat interactions, and text generation quickly, accurately, and highly efficiently, according to Kunlun Tech.

Singularity AI had a net loss if CNY23.7 million (USD3.3 million) in the first three months of this year, with revenue of CNY2.1 million (USD293,567), Kunlun Tech said. The AI firm's net loss was CNY10.9 million in 2022 on revenue of CNY4.2 million.

Editor: Martin Kadiev