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.
This week, a robotics company founded in 2015 with over ¥1 billion (~$139M) in annual revenue filed for its Hong Kong IPO at a ¥19.5 billion (~$2.7B) valuation. The same week, a robotics company founded 90 days ago with zero product raised at a ¥9 billion (~$1.25B) valuation. Both are rational bets. 127 deals spanned every sector, early-stage rounds continued to swell to growth-stage sizes, and the most interesting capital flows crossed sector boundaries.
Where the Money Went
127 deals this week, 49 of which disclosed amounts totaling approximately $1.75 billion (~¥12.6B). Strip out COOWA’s $600 million (~¥4.3B) IPO round and Tongwei Solar’s ¥5.06 billion (~$703M) restructuring, and 47 deals disclosed a combined ~$442 million. Most Chinese deals don’t disclose amounts, so the actual total is higher.
Stage distribution: 42 angel, seed, and pre-A rounds, 49 at Series A/A+, 15 at Series B or later, and 21 strategic investments. The early-stage dominance reflects a market where the embodied AI and physical AI boom is still generating new companies faster than it is graduating existing ones.
🧠 AI (25 deals)
The largest AI cluster spans physical AI infrastructure, video generation, and 3D content. Lightwheel AI (光轮智能) raised ¥1 billion (~$139M) for robot simulation data from a syndicate that includes three listed gaming companies. Sand AI raised over $100 million for video generation that competes with OpenAI’s Sora. Deemos (影眸科技) raised hundreds of millions of RMB for 3D generative AI with clients including Unity, Figma, and Canva. Jiangxing AI (江行智能) closed its third fundraise of 2026, backed by CATL-affiliated capital, Jinkosolar, and Yanzhou Energy as customer-investors.
⚡ New Energy & Materials (16 deals)
The headline is Tongwei Solar’s ¥5.06 billion (~$703M) restructuring, which dwarfs everything else. Beyond that, the energy transition stories are more interesting than the numbers suggest. HYDOtech (海德氢能) attracted a repeat investment from Saudi Aramco’s venture arm alongside Conch Group’s private equity arm, one of China’s largest cement producers. HYLICreate (合源锂创) landed a Xiaomi fund-led round for solid-state batteries with a live factory. Solide (索理德) raised for silicon-carbon anode materials at volume production scale.
🔬 Semiconductors (26 deals)
The second-largest sector by deal count spans optical interconnect chips, AI inference silicon, and specialized sensors. Aluksen Technology (傲科光电子) closed a B++ for high-speed optical chips that connect GPUs inside AI data centers. AIPhotonix (慧芯激光) raised to build its own manufacturing line for gallium arsenide and indium phosphide optical chips, targeting the same AI data center interconnect market. Transtreams (凌川科技) closed an A+ for a video compression chip that outperforms NVIDIA on compression efficiency benchmarks. Juxin Semiconductor (聚芯半导体) filed for a Hong Kong IPO as the world’s fourth-largest optical sensor company by revenue.
🤖 Robotics (20 deals)
COOWA (酷哇科技) is raising $600 million (~¥4.3B) ahead of a Hong Kong IPO at a ¥19.5 billion (~$2.7B) valuation, with SoftBank China Venture Capital backing. At the other extreme, Kunlun Xing (昆仑行机器人) raised an undisclosed amount at a ¥9 billion (~$1.25B) valuation 90 days after founding, with zero product. AGILINK (临界点) hit unicorn status at ¥10 billion in its B round, five months after founding, though unlike most instant unicorns it actually has revenue and 8,000+ dexterous robot hands shipped.
💡 Frontier Tech (4 deals)
The smallest sector by count but one deal carries outsized signal: Juhe Jubian (聚合聚变), a fusion energy startup in Hefei, raised an angel round co-led by Hillhouse Ventures and Sequoia China, the third fusion deal in three consecutive weeks across three distinct fusion approaches.
🚀 Aerospace & Defense (8 deals)
Argo Space Technology (吉天星舟) raised a B round as a profitable space-tech component supplier with 55 payloads delivered and 30 in orbit at a 100% success rate. Jitai Aviation (吉太航空) raised for a modular electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, an air taxi that takes off like a helicopter but runs on electric motors, targeting China’s government-designated “low-altitude economy” covering commercial airspace below 1,000 meters.
⚙️ Other Advanced Manufacturing (28 deals)
The largest sector by deal count spans industrial automation, optoelectronics, and specialized manufacturing. Highlights include Fubusi (辅布司), an AI textile cutting company, and Botler Robotics (博特勒), building high-temperature superconducting magnets for fusion reactors.
Spotlight
COOWA (酷哇科技)
Latest round, $600M (~¥4.3B), ¥19.5B (~$2.7B) valuation
Autonomous urban robots that actually make money.