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
Last week’s 46 deals reflected the May Day holiday. This week brought 103 across seven sectors, confirming the Q2 2026 funding cycle is fully underway.
103 deals, 28 with disclosed amounts. Those 28 disclosed a combined $3.2B (~¥23.1B), dominated by StepFun’s ~$2.5B Pre-IPO, which alone accounts for 78%. Strip that out and the remaining 27 deals disclosed ~$706M (~¥5.1B). The true weekly total is higher. Most deals don’t publish amounts, and the disclosed figure understates actual capital deployed.
Stage distribution skews heavily early. Angel and seed rounds make up the majority across every sector, with few Series A or B companies and a handful of mega-rounds at the top. The barbell shape that has characterized China’s deep tech funding all year is intact.
🤖 Robotics (23 deals)
The week’s largest deal count, and the most fragmented. No single round dominates the way StepFun does in AI. Vbot (维他动力) raised the headline ticket at ~¥500M (~$69M) Pre-A for a consumer robot dog, but the 23 deals cover consumer companion robots, industrial embodied AI, construction robots, lawn mowers, kitchen robots, wearable exoskeletons, and component suppliers. Fourteen of the 23 were angel or seed-stage, five Pre-A or A, and four strategic or B+ transactions. One straggler: ZeroErr (零差云控, robot system core components, C+, close to ¥100M, ~$14M).
🧠 AI (18 deals, including 3 stragglers)
StepFun at ~$2.5B Pre-IPO dwarfs everything else in the sector. 奕行智能 (EVAS, RISC-V AI chips) took a strategic investment from China Mobile’s chain fund; Motion Brain (眸深智能) raised ¥300M (~$42M) Pre-A for an embodied AI brain targeting humanoid robots; ComNergy Tech (共绩科技) raised close to ¥100M (~$14M) Pre-A for idle GPU compute aggregation. Three AI stragglers were sub-¥10M angel rounds.
🔬 Semiconductors (14 deals)
SemiDrive headlines with a $100M (~¥720M) Series C. China’s most-deployed automotive SoC maker is now pivoting toward humanoid robots. 象帝先计算 raised hundreds of millions in a Series B as its near-death 2024 story converts to an IPO-prep 2026 story. RiVAI Technology (睿思芯科) closed a B+ for high-end RISC-V server processors. Fermion Technology (费勉仪器) closed a C+ for precision scientific instruments used in semiconductor and quantum research. Five of the 14 deals have disclosed amounts; government-affiliated funds led or co-led at least eight.
⚡ New Energy & Materials (16 deals)
The largest sector by deal count after robotics. Lithium Source (常州锂源) took ¥440M (~$61M) strategic investment for LFP cathode expansion. Xinta Green Energy (信塔绿能) raised ¥100M (~$14M) at angel. Multiple early-stage deals in solid-state batteries, power electronics, carbon nanomaterials, and hydrogen water tech. Greater Bay Technology (巨湾技研), the ultra-fast charging battery maker, took an undisclosed strategic round.
🚀 Aerospace & Defense (8 deals)
Zero last week, eight this week. All angel or early stage, with a combined $14M in disclosed capital. Beijing Hengxing Power (恒星力量) raised ¥100M (~$14M) at angel for space energy research; Cathay Innovation and 厚雪资本 co-led. Shenzhen Zhiyu Aerospace (执宇航天) raised tens of millions (~$7M+) at angel for small reusable launch vehicles. Shenzhen Qingwei Aviation (庆为航空) closed a Pre-A for fly-by-wire avionics and smart cockpit displays. Vision Aero (维新宇航) raised tens of millions (~$7M+) at angel for a 7-seat eVTOL targeting emergency response. Four additional deals covered satellite propulsion, aerospace electrical interconnects, and microwave remote sensing.
⚙️ Other Advanced Manufacturing (15 deals)
公大激光 / Gongda Laser headlines with a Series C, hundreds of millions RMB, for its green fiber laser technology, more on this in Spotlight. Yiktong (亦唐科技) raised hundreds of millions in a B+ for high-speed SMT pick-and-place equipment. KeenCool (云酷智能) raised close to ¥100M (~$14M) for liquid cooling equipment for AI data centers. One straggler: 时耘科技 (intelligent robots, angel).
💡 Frontier Tech (9 deals)
微元合成 / Microcyto leads with ¥1.5B (~$208M), a synbio startup that used the round to acquire a ¥900M+/year traditional factory. 雷鸟创新 / Rayneo, the global #1 AR glasses brand by unit volume, closed a C+ round of over ¥1B (~$139M) in January 2026, captured in this week’s data. Two quantum computing startups, Hangzhou Wuwen Quantum (无问清芯) and GGQuanta (国光量子), and a photonic computing chip startup, PhotonCore (光子芯力), raised angel rounds. Genlight (佳量脑科学) shows a C round at an implied ¥60B (~$8.3B) valuation and has no verifiable public presence.
Spotlight
StepFun (阶跃星辰)
Pre-IPO, ~$2.5B (~¥18B), valuation undisclosed
China’s most aggressive LLM fundraiser is heading for Hong Kong, and the companies betting on it build the phones.