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
Whether you were celebrating Labor Day, Cinco de Mayo, or just enjoying a long weekend, China’s five-day May Day holiday (May 1-5) kept most dealmaking on hold.
46 deals, $2.39B (~¥17.2B) in disclosed capital across nine of them. That number needs context: Kimi’s $2B D-round accounts for 84% of the total. Strip it out and 45 deals generated $390M (~¥2.8B). AI led on deal count at twelve, with robotics close behind at ten. No aerospace deals.
🧠 AI (12 deals)
One deal dominates the entire week: Kimi’s $2B (~¥14.4B) D-round at a ~$20B (~¥144B) valuation, the largest Chinese LLM startup round of 2026. Beneath that headline, two AI infrastructure companies raised a combined ¥1B+ (~$139M+) in the same week with identical “token factory” positioning: Infinigence AI at ¥700M+ (~$97M+) and Magik Compute at hundreds of millions. Nanochap took a ¥300M (~$42M) strategic round for biomedical chips targeting visual brain-computer interfaces, a medical device company tagged as “AI” on deal trackers. The remaining deals include PixelBloom’s C-round for its AiPPT product (30M+ registered users globally), a medical LLM angel (WiseDiag, ¥65M / ~$9M), a spatial intelligence platform strategic round (XGRIDS), and four late-reported deals spanning industrial cognitive AI, AI infrastructure cloud, and AI-driven drug discovery.
🤖 Robotics (10 deals)
RoboScience pulled the largest robotics round of the week at ¥1B (~$139M) for its VLOA embodied AI platform. The remaining main-window deals are earlier-stage: Eagle Vision raised a Pre-A for bionic flapping-wing flying robots with a consumer product targeting the global hobbyist market, Westlake Robotics for civilian quadruped robots, Knownobound for industrial embodied AI targeting ship maintenance and container logistics, and underwater robotics veteran Boya Gongdao closed a D+ round. Five late-reported deals brought the sector total to ten, including a Sequoia China-backed angel in smart robots and a strategic round in core robot components backed by iFlytek Ventures and Hillhouse.
🔬 Semiconductors (8 deals)
Eight deals spanning the full chip stack, from data center networking to automotive SoCs to photonic interconnects. Yunsilicon builds what it describes as China’s first 400Gbps RDMA data center networking chip, positioning it as the domestic alternative to Nvidia’s ConnectX; ByteDance and Inspur hold strategic equity stakes. Oritek closed a C-round for automotive zone controller SoCs, with SDIC Merchants participating in every round from B1 through C and eight listed auto companies as shareholders. Siminwei drew three top-tier VCs (Oriental Fortune Capital, GGV Capital, Detong Capital) to co-lead a seed at a ¥500M (~$69M) valuation for AI inference architecture, an unusually heavy syndicate for a seed. Rhinoptix raised for TFLN photonic chips, the post-copper datacenter interconnect technology covered in the April 10 issue. Sicred continues scaling SiC power devices with 100,000+ units shipped to aerospace and defense customers.
⚙️ Other Advanced Manufacturing (7 deals)
Tachin Tech raised a Pre-A for electronic skin targeting the humanoid robot market, with core technology from Zhenan Bao’s Stanford lab. Makera closed a Series A for consumer desktop CNC machines after raising $10.2M on Kickstarter. Three smaller deals: a smart lighting company in Shenzhen (Mingyuda, ¥30M HKD / ~$3.8M), a consumer electronics angel backed by Co-Creation Ventures, and a miHoYo-backed equipment investment. Two late-reported deals added a metal 3D printing angel and a high-speed SMT equipment strategic round.
⚡ New Energy & Materials (5 deals)
BYD invested directly in battery electrolyte materials maker Huasheng Xianghe (strategic, hundreds of millions RMB), continuing its vertical integration down the EV supply chain. Hebang New Materials raised a ¥100M (~$14M) A-round for bio-based composite materials certified to EU high-speed rail standards. Three late-reported deals added carbon-based energy storage materials and emerging energy tech to the tally.
💡 Frontier Tech (4 deals)
STARTORUS closed a ¥500M (~$69M) A+ for its fusion energy reactor, crossing the $1B (~¥7.2B) valuation mark. Greencloud, a subsidiary of listed Wangsu Technology, raised for immersion liquid cooling with partnerships across Intel, Dell, and BASF. Nanoloop took a seed for sports brain-computer interface wearables at ¥10M+ (~$1.4M+). One late-reported deal: Boyin Bio raised an A-round for biomaterials from Legend Capital, CAS Advanced Industry Fund, and Cornerstone.
Other sectors
No aerospace or defense deals this week.
Spotlight
Kimi (月之暗面)
Series D, $2B (~¥14.4B), ~$20B (~¥144B)
China’s best-funded independent LLM startup hits frontier parity and raises the largest Chinese AI round of 2026.