Hardware and AI Keep Leading as Weekly Funding Tops 10 Billion Yuan | VC Weekly
Hardware and AI Continue to Lead, Weekly Funding Exceeds 10 Billion | Venture Capital Weekly Report
Summary
According to an incomplete tally by 36Kr, there were 181 financing events in China this week (Oct 9–Oct 15), with a disclosed total financing amount of about RMB 22.15 billion. Text by Song Qingyu, edited by Peng Xiaoqiu. Cover image source: Pexel
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According to an incomplete tally by 36Kr, this week(October 9– October 15)there were 181 financing events in China, with a disclosed total financing amount of about 22.15 billion RMB.
Among the six major sectors—hardware, AI, robotics, automotive, medical, and consumer—AI and hardware are the focus of capital bets in the past week。Among them,the hardware sector has disclosed a total of 71 transactions, ranking first among all sub‑sectors,with Lanxin Computing Power and Kunyou Optoelectronics each securing investments exceeding 1 billion. The largest single financing comes from the AI company WuWen ChipSphere, which completed a C‑round of 2.3 billion yuan. Note: For financing projects in this statistic that do not disclose specific amounts, they are converted using industry typical reference values (near ten million: converted as 8 million CNY; ten‑million level: converted as 10 million CNY; tens of millions: converted as 30 million CNY). These are not actual disclosed data, only for total trend reference; data source: IT Juzi Industry Financing Overview Statistics
Based on the disclosed data, there were more than 50 deals this week with financing amounts exceeding 100 million yuan, concentrated in fields such as artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing. The top ten projects are listed below. Note: Financing projects without disclosed amounts and financing projects of state‑owned enterprises are not included in this table; Source: IT Orange
Company Abbreviation:Tianxu Intelligence
Funding round:Pre-A+ round
Funding amount:tens of millions of yuan
Investor:Houxue Capital
Company Overview:Tianxu Intelligence was founded in October 2024. It is an AI for Science company that simultaneously masters vertical‑domain weather large models, an independent and controllable satellite observation network, and industry‑level delivery capabilities. The company has independently developed a vertical energy‑weather large model with fewer than 10 billion parameters and launched the “Condensing Sky Constellation” program; by July 2026 it had achieved deployment of the weather large model on a satellite and completed daily verification. Commercially, it has established a three‑layer model of “data sales – SaaS platform – private‑deployment capability,” serving customers such as State Grid, China Southern Power Grid, and several leading central power generation enterprises.
Team Background:Founder Liu Li holds a Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and has long researched the intersection of meteorology, artificial intelligence, and energy, with nearly a decade of deep industry experience. Over 80 % of the company’s staff hold master’s degrees or higher. The core team combines strong meteorological research expertise, full‑stack engineering implementation skills, and commercial experience in the energy sector, excelling at technological innovation and commercialization across interdisciplinary fields.
Company abbreviation:Yuanhuan Intelligent
Financing round:Seed and Seed+ round
Financing amount:Several hundred million yuan
Investors:Shunwei Capital, Shanghai Future Industry Fund, Xinglian Capital, Junli Capital, Shanghai Semiconductor Industry Investment, 360 Strategic Investment, Shoucheng Capital, Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Industry, BV Baidu Ventures, Shanxing Capital, Yunshi Capital
Company Overview: Yuanhuan Intelligence was founded in May 2026, focusing on AI for AI, developing a “Meta Model” — an “intuition model” that does not rely on large language models, capable of intuitively assessing model capabilities and directly generating model architectures and training hyperparameters. It targets numerical‑world scenarios such as industrial inspection, quantitative finance, weather forecasting, and autonomous driving. A self‑developed benchmark Architecture IQ will be released soon, and a general Meta Model 1.0 is planned for next year.
Team background: Founder Liu Ziming was born in 1998, earned his bachelor’s degree in Physics from Peking University, received his PhD from MIT, and conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford. He is currently an assistant professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Artificial Intelligence and the author of the novel neural network architecture KAN. The core team comes from Tsinghua, Peking University, and other top universities, with an average age of about 22, and has deep expertise at the intersection of neuroscience and AI.
Company abbreviation:Wu Wen Xin Qiong
Funding round:Series C
Funding amount:4.3 billion CNY
Investors:杭州高新金投、社保中关村基金(君联资本管理)、珠海科技产业集团、厦门国兴投资、徐汇资本、孚腾资本、中保投资、国开科创、Dabanc Holding、联想、九坤创投、同歌创投、腾讯、百度、红杉中国、洪泰基金、惠远资本、启明创投、达晨财智、顺为资本、砺思资本
Company Overview:Wuwen Xinqiong was founded in May 2023, positioning itself as an AI-native infrastructure service provider. It does not train models or build data centers, focusing on the software‑hardware co‑design layer between models and chips. The company proposes an “front‑store, back‑factory, one‑center” Agentic Infra strategic layout, with three tiers: Compute Distribution Center, Token Factory, and AI Productivity Store. It aggregates heterogeneous compute resources downstream and supports model applications upstream. To date, it has adapted to 16 chip types including NVIDIA, Huawei Ascend, and Biren, serving 37,000 P of compute, pioneering thousand‑card‑scale heterogeneous chip mixed training with a utilization rate of 97.6%. The daily Token usage of the large‑model service platform has grown more than 40‑fold in six months, with over 95% of inference tasks originating from Agent.
Team background:The company is a typical Tsinghua-affiliated startup team. Founder Wang Yu is a tenured professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University and an IEEE Fellow; co‑founder and CEO Xia Lixue, chief scientist Dai Guohao, and CTO Li Boxun all graduated from Tsinghua’s Electronic Engineering department under Professor Wang Yu. The team has been deeply engaged in deep‑learning hardware acceleration and heterogeneous system optimization since their PhD stage, possessing top‑level software and hardware R&D as well as engineering implementation capabilities.
Robotics sector
Company abbreviation:DeerBorg
Funding round:Pre-A+ round
Funding size:Hundred‑million RMB scale
Investors:复星锐正、清石资管、正熙资本、西高投、博众精工、苏创投
Company Overview:Deerberg was founded in 2022 and is a heavy‑industry embodied intelligent robotics company, primarily serving the defense, steel, offshore shipbuilding, and energy equipment sectors. It offers robotic products for intelligent cutting, grinding, welding, and coating, focusing on solving automation challenges in scenarios such as complex workpieces and low‑volume, multi‑type production. The company reduces robots’ reliance on manual teaching through physical perception, data learning, model inference, autonomous path planning, and process control. Currently, the intelligent grinding robot has been operating stably at customer production sites for more than a year, with the efficiency of a single unit about four times that of manual labor, and the equipment investment payback period can be shortened to a few months.
Team background:Founder and CEO Zhang Ben graduated from Tsinghua University’s Institute of Nuclear Science, holding a master’s degree. He has worked in industrial control and robotics development and management across nuclear industry, shipbuilding, construction machinery, and engineering machinery sectors, leading or participating in multiple national major projects, and has built a robotics R&D team from scratch. Core members come from Tsinghua University, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an University of Electronic Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University and other institutions, most of whom have served at leading robotics companies in the industry.
Company abbreviation:Xianyin Future
Funding rounds:Angel round, Pre‑A round, Series A
Funding amount:Several hundred million yuan
Investors:蓝驰创投、高瓴创投、彬复资本领投,凯风创投、水木清华校友种子基金、连界启辰资本、智元机器人、天合光能、华映资本、元禾原点、阿里巴巴、中国移动链长基金、洪泰基金、珠海科技产业集团、元生资本
Company Overview:StringFuture was founded in September 2025, focusing on rope‑driven flexible space robots and intelligent on‑orbit services, dedicated to using robots to replace humans in space for precise, high‑value on‑orbit tasks. The company uses high‑strength flexible ropes instead of traditional rigid links to achieve long‑distance power transmission and multi‑degree‑of‑freedom joint motion, offering advantages in flexibility, obstacle avoidance, and collision buffering. Its business focuses on three areas: on‑orbit refueling, assisted de‑orbiting, and on‑orbit maintenance, with plans to conduct space rendezvous and docking technology verification in 2027.
Team background:The company originated from the Jianghuai Frontier Technology Collaborative Innovation Center, with its technical roots in Professor Liang Bin’s team at Tsinghua University. Core members come from Tsinghua, Harbin Institute of Technology and other universities, and have been engaged in space robotics and ultra-redundant flexible robotic arm development for more than 20 years, repeatedly participating in national projects for on-orbit verification. Founder and CEO Tao Yanbo earned his bachelor’s degree from Beihang University, his Ph.D. from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and later conducted postdoctoral research at Tsinghua University under Professor Liang Bin. Liang Bin is a tenured professor in the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, director of the Institute of Navigation and Control, and serves as the company’s chief scientist. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern Polytechnical University and earned a Ph.D. in Precision Instruments from Tsinghua University in 1994.
Company abbreviation:Stardust Intelligence
Funding round:Series B
Funding amount:Approximately 1 billion CNY, post‑money valuation 15 billion CNY
Investors:Donghai Lead Investor,Hongtai Fund, Ninghai Xingtaihe Fund, Shanhe Capital,Xianmu Capital
Company Overview:Stardust Intelligence was founded in 2022, headquartered in Shenzhen, and is the world’s first company to achieve mass production of rope‑driven AI robots. The company adopts a rope‑driven (tendon rope transmission) technology path, using high‑strength ropes to replace traditional joint motor direct drives, making robotic arms lighter, softer, safer, and more cost‑controllable. Under the full‑stack approach of “AI model – embodied OS – rope‑driven body,” the company has reduced the price of high‑precision robots to under 90,000 yuan, emphasizing a mass‑production logic of “can work, can work well, affordable.”
Team Background:Founder and CEO Lai Jie has over 17 years of experience in AI and robotics R&D, previously serving as head of Baidu’s “Xiaodu Robot” team, the first employee and architect of Tencent Robotics X Lab, and leading the development of several products including the wheeled‑legged robot Ollie. The core team consists of six members, all from Tencent Robotics X Lab, bringing together experts from Google, UBTech, Huawei and other companies, possessing full‑stack AI‑plus‑robotics R&D and engineering capabilities.
HardwareSector
Company abbreviation: 庞伯特
Funding round: Series B
Funding amount: several hundred million yuan
Investor(s):Shenqi Capital, Mingshi Ventures, LanChi Ventures, JinQiu Fund, Huachuang Capital
Company Overview:Pombert, founded in 2019, is an AI sports robotics company that integrates R&D, manufacturing, and sales. The company initially entered the table tennis scene, gradually building an integrated “hand, eye, brain” capability covering serve execution, visual perception, motion analysis, and training decision-making, and applied its self-developed sports large model to intelligent serving machine hardware products, extending it to other sports such as tennis. Main products include the PACE series and the Aura all‑in‑one AI coach robot. Currently, global users exceed 300,000, devices have delivered over 2 billion serves, and in September 2026 it officially became the official partner of the Australian Open.
Team background:The company’s founder and CEO, Zhang Haibo, has over 10 years of experience in developing sports training robots. He previously led a team to create a national‑team‑level table‑tennis rally robot, overcoming core technical challenges such as high‑speed ball perception, trajectory prediction, and ball‑physics simulation, and possesses precise cross‑category product definition capabilities. Zhang says he hopes to use an intelligent serving robot as a platform to provide users with an always‑available, professionally stable AI Coach. The long‑term goal is to popularize professional sports training services, turning elite‑level training capability from a privilege of a few into an everyday tool accessible to the masses.
Company abbreviation:Cold Spring
Financing round:Angel round
Financing amount:Several tens of millions of yuan
Investors:Zhen’an Technology, Wanlang Magnet Plastic, Gongqingcheng Jinshengxi Phase IV (a fund under Jiangxi Provincial Financial Holding)
Company Overview:Lengquan was founded in 2025, focusing on solving the thermal challenges behind the continuous growth of AI compute power. Starting with two-phase liquid cooling, it builds the next‑generation AI compute thermal‑management infrastructure. The company has achieved a closed‑loop industry for two‑phase thermal‑management systems, with products compatible with domestic GPU chips as well as NVIDIA GB300, GB200 and the next‑generation Rubin full‑series AI chips, and in early 2026 jointly with Softcom Power and Softcom Huafang released two two‑phase liquid‑cooling server products.
Team Background:Founder He Minwei holds a master’s degree from Renmin University of China, is one of the country’s first liquid‑nitrogen server geeks, and has nearly ten years of overclocking competition experience. He previously served as CPO of a surgical‑robot company and led the original development of a “‑196 °C deep‑cold + 85 °C thermal‑strike” dual‑temperature tumor ablation device. Chief Scientist Professor Li Qing is a national “Outstanding Youth” awardee and a globally highly‑cited scholar. CTO Liu Bo earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Xi’an Jiaotong University, was a Huawei “Genius Youth” candidate, and proposed the pump‑driven, water‑free, atmospheric‑pressure two‑phase liquid‑cooling technology. CPO Mr. Yin brings 30 years of experience in refrigeration, data‑center HVAC, and liquid‑cooling technologies, having worked at Huawei, Inspur, and Lenovo, and participated in delivering the first 29 container projects for SoftBank Japan’s “Stargate.”
Company Abbreviation:Zhongwan Intelligence
Funding rounds:Angel round, Pre-A round, Pre-A+ round, and Series A
Funding amount:over 100 million yuan
Investors:中科创星、毅达资本、方广资本、苏高新金控、敦行资本
Company Overview:The parent company, Zhongke Jingrui, was incubated by the Suzhou Incubation Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, focusing on micro intelligent UAVs. Its core platform is a 200‑gram class micro aircraft, and its products include micro unmanned helicopters, coaxial dual‑propeller, and biomimetic flyers among other configurations. The company develops its own flight control low‑level code, equipped with a 0.8 TOPS lightweight onboard intelligent module, and achieves GPS‑free autonomous navigation and complex environment reconstruction based on visual SLAM. Since 2026, the Zhihong and Yifeng series have secured more than 5,000 orders, with pending orders worth hundreds of millions of yuan.
Team Background:The core team consists of defense technology experts with over 20 years of industry experience, who have led multiple national key projects. Founder Liu Desheng leads the team in building a full‑chain capability covering overall design, aerodynamics and structural design, core component development, and mass production.
Company abbreviation:三凯机电
Funding round:Series B
Funding amount:several hundred million yuan
Investor(s):Industrial Mother Machine Industry Investment Fund, Wuchan Zhongda Investment Joint, Caichong Capital, Wenling Sea, Rongzhi
Company Overview:Sankai Electromechanical, founded in 2007, is one of the earliest domestic companies to independently develop and mass‑produce precision planetary gearboxes. Its products are widely used in machine tools and CNC, AGV/AMR, photovoltaic lithium batteries, medical imaging, 3C electronics, drone servos and other fields, enabling import substitution and cost reduction. Since 2022, it has built a robotics service team, launching harmonic reducers and planetary joint reducers adapted for humanoid robot joints, and has entered the core supply chains of leading enterprises such as the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, achieving stable batch deliveries. At the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Competition in August 2026, the Tiangong series robots won 45 medals, with their core joint components supplied by Sankai Electromechanical.
Team background:Founder and CEO Jiang Jianbin has been deeply involved in the precision transmission field for many years. The company will focus on the modular “motor + gearbox” direction in the future and will not engage in driver design.
Automotive sector
Company abbreviation:Miaoxiang Technology
Financing round: Series A
Financing amount:tens of millions RMB
Investor:Xiamen Siming Sci‑Tech Innovation Fund, Zhangzhou Changtai Innovation Fund
Company Overview:MiaoXiang Technology, founded in March 2020, is an IoT technology company under the KuaiXiansen Group, focusing on smart safety charging and swapping platforms for two‑wheel electric vehicles. The core business is lithium‑battery PACK R&D and manufacturing, enhancing fast‑charging capability and cycle life by optimizing cell module integration structures and providing a comprehensive intelligent thermal management system. This round of financing will be used for production technology R&D, intelligent production line construction, and market expansion. The company plans to establish small‑power battery and two‑wheel EV assembly and charging‑swapping equipment production bases in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa by 2027.
Team background:Founder and CEO Chu Donghui, a graduate of Communication University of China, previously led the food program at Xiamen TV. In 2015, he founded the instant delivery service provider Kuai Xiansen, gaining deep experience in logistics operations and team management. Core team members mostly come from e‑commerce and instant delivery sectors, possessing cross‑industry resource integration and large‑scale operation capabilities.
Medical segment
Company abbreviation:Kunwei Technology
Funding round:Series B
Funding amount:approximately 400 million CNY
Investors:XVC, Sequoia China, Sherpa, Tencent
Company Overview:Kunwei Technology, founded in 2019, is the world’s only company that has achieved non‑invasive, ultra‑high‑resolution brain imaging through the skull using ultrasound. The company reconstructs the computational imaging system with “acoustic spatial intelligence,” using low‑frequency sound waves to penetrate the skull and then leveraging GPU computing and a spatial‑perception micro‑model to produce high‑precision images, delivering device computing power more than a thousand times that of conventional ultrasound. In 2024 it obtained the first domestic registration certificate for cranial ultrasound, and in 2025 it received EU certification and launched commercialization, signing multi‑ten‑million‑yuan orders that season. Its self‑developed kOS operating system covers signal acquisition, beamforming, and image reconstruction, aiming to become an infrastructure platform for the brain science field.
Team background:Founder and CEO Liu Jiajia holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University. He entered the ultrasound hardware field in 2008, exploring low‑frequency transcranial ultrasound pathways from first principles. In 2019 he founded Kunwei Technology. Core technologies are protected as trade secrets; theoretical breakthroughs have been directly translated into medical‑grade product deliveries. The company has not disclosed any external financing in its first seven years, and results are presented in product form.
Company short name:Lianjin Bio
Financing round:Series A
Funding size:over 300 million CNY
Investors:尔巴投资、北京市医药健康产业投资基金、启明创投、珠海科技产业集团、华盖资本、泰煜投资、W Capital
Company Overview:Lianjin Biotech was founded in 2026 and is headquartered in Daxing District, Beijing. It is an innovative biotechnology company focused on the development of targeted conjugate drugs. The company independently developed the world‑first STAR technology platform, covering three molecular formats: bispecific ADC, AOC, and ADOC, achieving precise release through tumor‑microenvironment‑specific activation. The lead pipeline candidate ALG01 is the world’s first IO+TAA dual‑target STAR‑BiADC; preclinical data show it has significant advantages in efficacy, toxicity profile, and safety window. This round of funding will help ALG01 quickly enter Phase I clinical trials and support the development of additional pipeline products.
Team Background:The core team has many years of experience in new‑drug and antibody‑drug conjugate development, focusing on innovative targeted conjugate drug technologies, and possesses end‑to‑end expertise from multinational R&D to commercialization.
Company abbreviation:Frontier Brain-like Center
Funding round:Angel round
Funding amount:250 million
Investors:Hai Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Pilot Platform Co., Ltd., Chengdu Kechuang Investment Group
Company Overview:Chengdu Frontier Brain-Inspired Artificial Intelligence Innovation Center Co., Ltd., a brain‑computer interface R&D and application service provider. It develops proprietary non‑invasive brain‑computer interface hardware and software. Core products include an autism assistance diagnostic system (accuracy 91.67%) and a targeted transcranial magnetic therapy device, having served over 2,000 children with autism.
Team background:Center Director Dr. Feng Rui, Bioengineering major at University of Electronic Science and Technology; the core team gathers experts from UESTC, Sichuan University and others, covering brain‑computer interfaces, artificial intelligence, and clinical medicine.
Consumer sector
Company abbreviation:Jinli Gate
Funding round:Series A+
Funding amount:Not disclosed
Investor:BuEr Capital
Company Overview:Jinli Door originally started as the snack brand “Jinli Door” founded in 2015. In 2021 it transformed into a fresh snack brand, focusing on short‑shelf‑life, made‑to‑order products and clean labeling. The brand adheres to a fully owned‑store model; by September 2026 it operates 48 directly‑managed stores, each generating monthly sales of about 1.5–2 million RMB, with top stores reaching over 4 million RMB. Gross margin is 35%–40%, and member repurchase rate exceeds 60%. In May 2026 the brand expanded out of Hunan, entering cities such as Nanjing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, primarily locating in core commercial complexes of the CR Vanguard group, and has established three major production bases in Changsha, Dongguan, and Changzhou.
Team Background:Founders Liu Chang and Tao Feng established the chestnut chain brand “Jinli Door” in Changsha in 2015. In 2021 they founded Hunan Jinli Door Food Co., Ltd. and pivoted to fresh snacks, with Liu Chang serving as legal representative and chairman. The core team largely comes from Sam’s Club, bringing mature retail operation experience and being dubbed by consumers as “affordable little Sam’s”. After KK‑group capital investment, the founding team still holds 90% of the equity, maintaining absolute control.
Company abbreviation:NaoFanTian Technology
Funding round:Angel round
Funding amount:Not disclosed
Investor:Qingshan Capital, Adam Zhu
Company Overview:NaoFanTian was founded in 2022, positioning itself as a top-tier sports IP operator and athlete card publisher. The company entered the market with esports IP derivatives, then focused on the sports athlete card track, secured a five‑year exclusive Asian license for the Argentina national team in March 2025 and signed an official partnership with Messi; in July 2026 it obtained an exclusive license for the Belgium national team. Its HEROCK brand has entered the CGC and PSA international grading systems, and a Messi autograph card was sold for 120,000 CNY.
Team background:Founder and CEO Cao Lei has 20 years of experience in sports industry operations and investment, previously serving at IMG, the world’s largest sports management company, and handling cultural and sports investments and industry operations at Suning Investment, Yaowei Capital, Fosun Group, and IDG. The core team has years of deep expertise in cultural IP operations, trend merchandise development, and the card industry.
Company short name:Haomi Innovation
Funding round:Series A
Funding amount:Not disclosed
Investor:招商资本、坚果资本、海口金控、金沙江联合资本
Company Overview:The EUHOMY brand, established in 2020, is a portable ice‑making machine brand under Ningbo Haomi Technology, focusing on high cost‑performance and multi‑scenario applications. Its flagship product can produce 9 ice cubes in 6 minutes and 26 pounds of ice in 24 hours, priced at $89.99, far lower than European and American competitors. Leveraging TikTok influencer marketing and YouTube professional reviews, it quickly entered the market; by 2025, total channel sales exceeded RMB 1.4 billion, with TikTok US sales reaching 240,000 units.
Team Background:Founder Shen Peng, an alumnus of Ningbo University, left a state‑owned enterprise in 2016 to pursue cross‑border e‑commerce, initially focusing on lighting and pet supplies. In 2022 he split the business from his former partner, taking a 20‑person team and the still‑nascent EUHOMY brand to develop independently. The team has grown from the initial 20 members to 270, and revenue in 2024 surpassed RMB 1.4 billion.
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