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 is where talent concentrates, where production capacity gets built, and where the next commercial technologies will come from.
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.
As this report went to press, China’s drug regulator accepted an IPO application from Neuracle (博睿康), the company behind the world’s first commercially approved invasive brain-computer interface. It filed for a ¥2.5 billion (~$347M) listing on Shanghai’s STAR Market, the tech-focused board that serves a similar role to Nasdaq for Chinese companies. That timing is coincidental, but the signal is not. China’s frontier medical devices are moving from lab to market to public listing faster than most investors expected.
Where the Money Went
This week’s scan captured 109 deals across all sectors, with 27 additional stragglers from last week’s gap. Origin Quantum’s ¥3 billion (~$417M) quantum computing Pre-IPO dominated the headline numbers. Strip that out and 16 deals disclosed a combined ~$443M (~¥3.2B), a solid mid-tier week. Robotics and AI continued to lead deal volume, but the week’s most interesting stories came from frontier tech and advanced manufacturing.
🧠 AI (22 deals)
AI deal flow stayed strong at 22 rounds, though this week skewed toward application-layer companies rather than foundation models. The standout was CreativeFitting (井英科技), which closed both an A and A+ round backed by Ant Group for its overseas AI short drama app, Reel.AI. HiDream.ai (智象未来) received a strategic investment from Huace Film (华策影视), one of China’s largest private TV drama producers. A cluster of early-stage deals in spatial intelligence, AI education, and virtual humans filled out the sector.
⚡ New Energy & Materials (19 deals)
Materials and new energy logged 19 deals, almost entirely early-stage. MATTERENE (烯材科技), co-founded by Nobel laureate Andre Geim, raised a Pre-A+ from Aviation Industry Investment for its graphene film production facility in Shenyang. Advanced ceramics, specialty metals, and battery materials accounted for the bulk of deals, with state-backed funds leading most rounds.
🔬 Semiconductors (18 deals)
Semiconductor deal count held steady at 18. The week’s standout was Anatrix (安纳智芯), a six-month-old Peking University spinout whose RRAM analog computing chip earned a Nature Electronics paper and a Series A led by Matrix Partners China (经纬创投). Raysees (瑞识科技), the Samsung Galaxy Ring sensor supplier, took strategic capital from GAC at a ¥3.5 billion (~$486M) valuation. Wisewave (芯潮流), which designs the high-speed data link circuits that let chips inside servers and AI clusters talk to each other at hundreds of gigabits per second, raised a Series A from Sequoia China and CITIC Securities.
🤖 Robotics (16 deals)
Robotics logged 16 deals and produced some of the week’s biggest stories. Dexmal (原力灵机) closed a B round at ¥6 billion (~$833M) valuation backed by three of China’s top large language model companies: Zhipu AI, StepFun (阶跃星辰), and SenseTime. LiberAI hit a ¥3 billion (~$417M) valuation on a Pre-A. Inspire Robotics (因时机器人) raised a C+ at ¥2.6 billion (~$361M), having shipped over 10,000 dexterous hands in 2025. Qianjue Robotics (千诀科技) raised an A round at a ¥5 billion (~$694M) valuation for its robot decision-making and planning platform.
💡 Frontier Tech (9 deals)
Frontier tech produced the week’s largest round and its strongest stories. Origin Quantum (本源量子) raised ¥3 billion (~$417M) in a Pre-IPO with China North Industries Group (中国兵器集团), a defense conglomerate, among the lead investors. A nuclear energy cluster formed: Dongsheng Fusion (东昇聚变) raised $100 million (~¥720M) to build a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped reactor that confines superheated plasma with magnetic fields to fuse hydrogen isotopes into helium, releasing energy. Its D-He3 fuel choice produces near-zero radioactive waste. Weilan Zhidian (蔚蓝支点) raised hundreds of millions of RMB for a small modular fission reactor, and straggler Dongxi Fusion (东曦聚变) raised hundreds of millions for a fusion approach that uses high-powered lasers to compress fuel pellets until they ignite. In BCI, Shenfu Jianxing (神复健行) raised ¥300 million (~$42M) at ¥1.8 billion (~$250M), the largest angel round in Chinese BCI history.
🚀 Aerospace & Defense (8 deals)
Eight aerospace deals, led by Expace (科工火箭), the commercial launch arm of state defense conglomerate CASIC, which raised ¥300 million (~$42M) in a C round. Tianmu Turbine (天目涡轮) raised a near-¥100 million (~$14M) angel for aviation engines, an unusually large angel for propulsion hardware.
⚙️ Other Adv. Manufacturing (17 deals)
Seventeen deals in optics, 3D printing, precision equipment, and factory automation. The headline was Goertek Optical (歌尔科技), which took ¥1 billion (~$139M) in strategic capital from parent Goertek and Sunny Optical at a ¥8.79 billion (~$1.22B) valuation, positioning for the AR/VR optics cycle.
Spotlight
Shenfu Jianxing (神复健行)
Angel, ¥300M+ (~$42M), ¥1.8B valuation (~$250M)
Implantable brain-spinal interfaces that help paralyzed patients walk again.