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.
The China Round is free, published weekly, 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 USD AUM. Now running ZenGen Labs, a cross-border strategy studio covering AI, robotics, and deep tech.
The structural stories this week sit further down the cap table. Three competing humanoid robot makers put money into the same AI-model supplier, a cooking-robot company reported turning profitable, and a Chinese cockpit chip appeared inside a Volkswagen Group vehicle for the first time. Moonshot’s $3.5 billion F round dominates the numbers.
Where the Money Went
AI 35 | Semis 28 | Mfg 35 | Energy 21 | Robotics 14 | Frontier 11 | Aero 8
152 deals | $4.18B disclosed | $683M ex-Moonshot
Three fusion companies raised in one week, with CATL leading its first fusion bet into a 7-month-old startup. Robotics capital went beneath the robot. Three rival humanoid makers backed the same AI-model supplier (Delta Intelligence, nearly ¥500M at a ¥3B valuation) while cooking robots and dexterous hands split the remaining $97M in disclosed robotics capital. Semiconductors stayed state-heavy at later stages, anchored by SiEngine’s $100M for the cockpit chip inside a Volkswagen and Angstrom Excellence’s ¥1B for wafer metrology equipment. AI was almost entirely Moonshot’s $3.5B F round; strip it out and the week split between agent infrastructure and biological AI. Corporate strategics led or co-led an unusually large share of headline deals, with CATL in fusion, Alibaba Cloud in AI ops (while running a competing internal product), China Merchants Capital in cooking robots, and Sungrow and Tianqi Lithium putting a combined ¥805M (~$112M) into battery maker Sunwoda EVB.
Spotlight
Delta Intelligence (德塔智能)
Angel Round (6th round), Nearly ¥500M (~$69M), ¥3B (~$417M) valuation
Humanoid robot foundation-model platform, six rounds in six months.