# Former Qwen lead Junyang Lin launches Pragmatik Labs for digital and physical agents > Source: > Published: 2026-08-11 23:14:59+00:00 [Junyang Lin (@JustinLin610)](https://x.com/JustinLin610/status/2087214239643730227), the former technical lead of Alibaba's Qwen model family, launched Pragmatik Labs in Shanghai on Tuesday to research AI agents that operate across software and the physical world. Lin said [HSG](https://www.hsgcap.com/about-us/) and [Gaorong Ventures](https://www.gaorongvc.com/portfolio.html) co-led Pragmatik Labs' financing, with [Tencent](https://www.tencent.com/en-us/about.html) also participating. S&P Capital IQ previously reported that Pragmatik Labs raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a $2 billion post-money valuation in a June 15th transaction. Its figures assigned investments of $100 million each to HSG and Gaorong and $20 million to Tencent, alongside other investors. The announcement gives a name and a defined research mandate to a venture that investors had begun funding months after Lin left Alibaba. Earlier reporting from [The Information](https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/exclusive-tencent-backs-former-alibaba-researchers-new-ai-lab/) had identified Tencent as a backer and linked Lin's plans to world models and embodied intelligence. Lin's own description places Pragmatik Labs across both digital agents and machines that perceive and act in physical environments. ### From linguistics to Qwen Lin left Alibaba on March 4th, writing "Bye my beloved Qwen" in a departure covered by [Reuters](https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/alibabas-qwen-ai-division-head-becomes-latest-exec-to-leave-this-year-4539795). Reuters identified him as the head of Alibaba's Qwen AI model division and reported that his exit followed two other senior departures from the group in early 2026. His work on Qwen is documented across the model family's research papers. Lin was an author of the original [Qwen technical report](https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.16609), published in 2023, and was listed among the core contributors to the [Qwen2.5 technical report](https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.15115). The latter covered a model family spanning general language, mathematics, coding and multimodal systems, with both open-weight and hosted releases. Lin's route into large-model research began in language rather than computer science. His [resume](https://justinlin610.github.io/resume_junyanglin.pdf) lists a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of International Relations and a master's degree in linguistics from Peking University. He led a research group at Peking University's Institute of Computational Linguistics before joining Alibaba's DAMO Academy as a senior algorithm engineer in July 2019. At Alibaba, Lin worked on natural-language generation for Taobao search and recommendation before becoming one of the researchers most closely associated with Qwen. That combination of language research and production-scale model development now sits at the center of Pragmatik Labs' founding pitch. ### A broad agent mandate Lin traced the Pragmatik name to his academic background. He wrote that a friend first recommended pragmatics, the branch of linguistics concerned with meaning in context, before he moved into computational linguistics and natural-language processing. The name also references pragmaticism, which Lin presented as a target for artificial general intelligence: systems judged by how effectively they function in real situations. That thesis gives Pragmatik Labs room to work across model training, agent software and embodied systems without limiting its identity to a single application. Digital agents require models that can plan, use tools, retain context and complete tasks across software. Physical agents add perception, spatial reasoning and interaction with machines. Combining those domains creates a substantially larger research and capital requirement than building an application on top of an existing model API. The reported financing reflects that cost structure. A $2 billion post-money valuation before Pragmatik Labs has publicly presented a model or commercial product prices Lin's Qwen record, recruiting reach and research agenda into the round. HSG and Gaorong are underwriting the core lab, while Tencent's participation gives Pragmatik Labs another connection to one of China's largest AI infrastructure and distribution platforms. Lin's announcement marks his return as a founder five months after leaving Qwen. Pragmatik Labs is starting with institutional backing that many AI research groups spend years assembling. Its first technical releases will determine whether Lin can turn the model-building approach he developed inside Alibaba into an independent agent platform spanning computers and machines.