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.
Two moods showed up in the same week. Investors poured early money into nuclear fusion and small modular reactors, frontier energy bets priced at valuations that assume a decade of patience, while one of China’s mid-tier battery makers raised a down round at a third below its prior valuation. Long-patience bets at the frontier, a squeeze in the commodity middle.
Where the Money Went
107 deals crossed the wire this week. Of those, 31 disclosed a dollar figure, for a combined total of roughly $1.21 billion (~¥8.7 billion). Treat that as a floor, not a ceiling: most Chinese rounds, especially the early ones, never publish an amount, so the real number is well above what the disclosed deals add up to.
🧠 AI (23 deals)
The busiest sector by deal count, and the one where chips, not models, drew the money. Several rounds converged on one idea: make AI computing cheaper by routing around Nvidia rather than trying to match it head-on. Sparse-computing chipmaker Moffett AI took ¥1 billion (~$139M); its chips skip the math the network does not need, since most of the numbers flowing through a neural network are zeros that contribute nothing, so the chip does more useful work per watt. A cluster of smaller chip startups raised on the same cost-per-answer logic. Disclosed AI capital came to about $251M (~¥1.8B).
⚡ New Energy & Materials (16 deals)
The week’s largest disclosed pool, about $317M (~¥2.3B), spread across battery materials, solid-state electrolytes, and specialty materials. The standout was a markdown rather than a milestone (see Spotlight), but capital also kept flowing toward the next battery chemistry rather than today’s.
🔬 Semiconductors (11 deals)
Mostly early and mostly cheap, around $26M (~¥187M) disclosed, but strategically dense: memory-maker-backed inference chips, compute-in-memory designs (chips that compute where data is stored, avoiding the memory-to-processor shuttling that is one of the largest energy costs in AI hardware), and chip-making equipment. Listed component suppliers showed up as investors, buying a window into the startups building around them.
🤖 Robotics (20 deals)
Money concentrated in components, not finished robots. Force sensors, robot hands, the interchangeable tools a robot arm swaps at its wrist, and the data used to train machines all drew more capital than any finished humanoid. The largest disclosed robotics round, ¥1 billion (~$139M), went to a force-control arm maker rather than a humanoid brand. Disclosed robotics capital was about $235M (~¥1.7B).
💡 Frontier Tech (6 deals)
Small in count, outsized in ambition: two nuclear-fusion startups, a small modular reactor designer, a neutral-atom quantum company (one of the leading approaches to a practical quantum computer, trapping individual atoms with laser beams as the basic units of calculation), and a brain-spine implant maker. Pre-revenue, pre-prototype, and priced like proven leaders. Disclosed capital was only about $42M (~¥300M), but here the headline figures are the valuations, not the cash in.
🚀 Aerospace & Defense (7 deals)
Electric air taxis and satellite laser-communication startups led here, about $146M (~¥1.05B) disclosed. The biggest was a ¥1 billion (~$139M) round for a maker of passenger electric aircraft that take off vertically like a helicopter but run on battery motors.
⚙️ Other Adv. Manufacturing (24 deals)
The catch-all sector and the second busiest, about $196M (~¥1.4B) disclosed: industrial lasers, 3D printing, optical and inspection equipment, and consumer hardware. A ¥900 million (~$125M) raise for an industrial-laser business was the largest.
Spotlight
Sunwoda EVB (欣旺达动力)
Series C, ¥1.68 billion (~$233M), ¥25 billion (~$3.5B) pre-money valuation
The power-battery arm of a listed cell maker, raising at a steep discount.