When Dai Wenyuan took money from Sequoia Capital China and its thoughtful head,Neil Shen,several years ago for his AI start-up,Fourth Paradigm,the investment world was a different place.

Alibaba, Tencent and Softbank had yet to become super powerful investors they have proven to be. Today their new status reflects their low cost of capital, the massive size of the checks they can write, and the lack of constraints on when they wish to get their money back—maybe never.

Ali, Tencent and especially Softbank, can afford to give the companies in which they invest much higher valuations than Sequoia, (which has to satisfy its own investors’ expectations of high returns), can afford to offer. But Mr Dai, who went from being part of Baidu’s artificial intelligence endeavors to doing his own thing, says he has no regrets.