The China Round is a weekly report tracking venture and strategic investment activity across China’s core technology sectors: AI, robotics, semiconductors, new energy and materials, aerospace and defense, and frontier tech.
Where capital flows tells you where talent is concentrating, where production capacity is being built, and which technologies will reach commercial scale first.
The China Round is free, published every Friday, and written for investors, operators, and founders tracking where China’s tech capital is moving and why it matters.
About the author: Dermot McGrath is Irish, based in Shanghai, a decade in China’s tech and investment ecosystem, fluent Mandarin. Co-founded a VC fund scaled to nine-figure AUM. Now running ZenGen Labs, a cross-border strategy studio covering AI, robotics, and deep tech.
Where the Money Went
102 deals from April 10 to 17. $1.63 billion (~¥11.7B) in disclosed capital across 27 of them — the other 75 went undisclosed. Robotics commanded $937 million (~¥6.75B) of that, across 23 deals. This week, though, the more interesting pattern runs underneath the headline numbers: listed companies and OEM customers are entering venture rounds not as passive financial investors but as strategic acquirers, buying equity positions in their key suppliers before commercial volumes arrive.
🤖 Robotics (23 deals)
它石智航 (TARS Robotics) closed a $455 million (~¥32.8亿) Pre-A, reportedly the largest private embodied AI raise in Chinese history, with Hillhouse, HongShan, and Meituan co-leading 14 months after founding. The stage distribution across the batch forms a barbell: eight angel and Pre-A rounds ran alongside five B+ or strategic rounds, with almost nothing in between.
🧠 AI (17 deals)
The bulk of the disclosed capital — ¥5亿+ (~$70M+) — went into one company: 智象未来 (HiDream.ai), which released an MIT-licensed open-source image model before closing this round. The broader batch skews early, with Anhui, Hefei, and Beijing municipal capital prominent as co-investors.
🔬 Semiconductors (23 deals)
The sector’s headline event was not a venture round. 盛合晶微 (SJ Semiconductor, 688820.SH) listed on the STAR Market 2,700 times oversubscribed, reaching a ¥360亿 (~$5B) market cap at issue, with ¥47.79亿 (~$664M) in net proceeds. As the #1 domestic 12-inch chip bumping provider and holder of 85% share in mainland 2.5D advanced packaging, it controls a chokepoint that every Chinese AI chip designer needs to reach production. Among the private rounds, 芯擎科技 closed a B+ at approximately $100 million (~¥720M) for its automotive cockpit chip platform, pulling in Yutong Bus (600066.SH) as a strategic co-investor, extending the company’s addressable market beyond passenger EVs.
⚡ New Energy & Materials (14 deals)
A quieter week for the sector. 疆海科技 (Zendure), which sells energy storage hardware across 63 countries and counts Europe and North America as its primary markets, raised a round led by domestic strategic investors. 顺铉新材, a specialty polyimide film producer with export relationships into South Korea, Japan, the US, and Russia, closed a materials round. Neither disclosed amounts.
🚀 Aerospace & Defense (9 deals)
边界智控 (Boundary.AI) closed a B-round for its eVTOL flight control systems — the only Chinese company to have cleared CAAC’s SOI#1 airworthiness review for eVTOL-specific FCS. The rest of the batch was light: several pre-A rounds for drone platforms and satellite sensor startups, mostly undisclosed.
⚙️ Other Advanced Manufacturing (12 deals)
Mixed batch with no standout cluster. 锐能科技 raised a B-round with 菱电电控 (688667.SH) acquiring 30% as a strategic lead. Several other industrial automation plays closed early-stage rounds with regional government funds, consistent with the ongoing manufacturing digitization push in non-coastal provinces.
💡 Frontier Tech (4 deals)
量旋科技 (SpinQ) — announced April 3, flagged in this week’s straggler batch — sells superconducting quantum computers commercially into 200+ institutions across 40+ countries and raised ¥6亿 (~$83M) in a C+, several months after closing its C-round, bringing the combined C-series total to approximately ¥10亿 (~$139M). The company is profitable and building out a pre-IPO syndicate with Guotai Junan Innovation and Chengdu state capital as new investors. NovaFusionX (诺瓦聚变) appears in this week’s data with its ¥7亿 (~$97M) 天使+ round but was covered in last week’s issue; refer to that report for the full analysis.
Spotlight
TARS Robotics (它石智航)
Pre-A, $455M (~¥32.8亿), valuation ¥120.58亿 (~$1.67B)
Humanoid robotics, 14 months old, betting against the VLA consensus.