The strategic investment arms of large corporations are making a comeback.

In the current era of rapid development in the AI field, large internet companies have once again included strategic investment in their core agendas, using it as a means parallel to their business operations to accelerate the competition for a favorable position in the AI era. Although their strategic approaches are the same, they have taken very different paths in choosing investment directions.

Three years ago, the strategic investment arms of large companies fell silent amidst a wave of contraction, but now they are becoming active again.

Recently, reporters from Venture Capital Daily learned from multiple sources close to the deal that Alibaba led the angel - round investment in the nuclear fusion startup Nova Fusion, with the investment amount reaching the level of hundreds of millions of yuan.

Previously, reporters from Venture Capital Daily learned from Nova Fusion that its application will focus on the energy supply for AI data centers. This means that Alibaba's investment layout has further extended to the upstream of the AI industry chain. Since the rise of generative AI, Alibaba has completed a full - chain investment layout from energy, AI infrastructure, and basic models to applications, covering iconic projects in different industrial chain links such as Silicon Flow, Unitree Robotics, and Darkside of the Moon.

According to reporters from Venture Capital Daily who learned from informed sources, ByteDance also investigated several controllable nuclear fusion projects on the market, including Energy Singularity, but ultimately did not make an investment.

Recently, JD.com, Meituan, and Ant Group have also attracted attention due to their frequent overseas investment activities. In this wave of investment in embodied intelligence, all three have led investment rounds multiple times. In particular, JD.com's rhythm of consecutively announcing leading investments in three embodied intelligence projects in one day has refocused the market's attention on this large company that has rarely made investments in the past four years.

It can be seen that in the current era of rapid development in the AI field, large internet companies have once again included strategic investment in their core agendas, using it as a means parallel to their business operations to accelerate the competition for a favorable position in the AI era. Although their strategic approaches are the same, they have taken very different paths in choosing investment directions.

Alibaba Group: All - out Advance!

The last time Alibaba's strategic investment attracted large - scale market attention was due to the rumor of team reduction in the second half of 2022: the investment team was reduced from 110 people to about 70 people, involving middle - and high - level personnel in the Chinese mainland. By the beginning of last year, when Alibaba's strategic investment was once again in the spotlight, it had become one of the most active strategic investors in the wave of generative AI.

At that time, the domestic AI trend was concentrated on the subdivision of large language models. As an investor, Alibaba invested in several major large - model startup projects at that time, such as Darkside of the Moon, MiniMax, Zhipu, Baichuan Intelligence, and Zero One Everything. It can be said to be the most aggressive large company in investment layout.

Subsequently, the competitive landscape of domestic large models changed rapidly, and some projects underwent a re - evaluation of their value. Alibaba, which heavily invested in large - model startup projects, also faced scrutiny of its investment strategy, especially the decision to acquire a 36% stake in Darkside of the Moon for a total consideration of 790 million yuan.

In September 2024, Hu Xiao, the person in charge of Alibaba's strategic investment who promoted the investment in Darkside of the Moon, left the company. According to a report by "Undercurrent" at that time, Jiang Shanshan, an investment director of Alibaba's strategic investment who also participated in the investment in Darkside of the Moon, would also be transferred to another position. Darkside of the Moon was deeply involved in an arbitration dispute with its old shareholders at that time and had previously caused controversy due to the cash - out behavior of its founder, Yang Zhilin. The departure of the relevant personnel who led Alibaba's investment in Darkside of the Moon at this time has sparked speculation.

The outside world usually regards Alibaba's strategic investment as a single entity. According to an informed source who told reporters from Venture Capital Daily, Alibaba actually has multiple strategic investment departments internally, and different strategic investment departments have different focuses in investment directions and decision - making mechanisms. For example, Alibaba Cloud's strategic investment mainly focuses on investing in areas related to cloud infrastructure.

Earlier this year, Alibaba CEO Wu Yongming said that in the next three years, Alibaba will invest more than 380 billion yuan in building cloud and AI hardware infrastructure. It is hard not to associate Alibaba's investment in the nuclear fusion project with the extension of this AI infrastructure construction strategy - seeking disruptive technological solutions at the energy end to reduce the operating cost of AI infrastructure.

It is reported that Alibaba Cloud's strategic investment was responsible for the investment in several large - model startup projects other than Darkside of the Moon. The above - mentioned informed source said, "Alibaba Cloud's strategic investment has indeed made many investments in the past two years, but overall, the pace is not very aggressive."

Reporters from Venture Capital Daily combined with the data from Cailian Press's Venture Capital Connect and found that as of now this year, Alibaba Cloud's strategic investment has publicly announced three investment events, involving the cloud - native project Ring Boundary Cloud Computing, the AI computing infrastructure platform Silicon Flow, and the AI Agent development platform BetterYeah AI.

There have been a total of seven projects with Alibaba Group as the investment entity, including the home customization service platform Oxygen House, the top - tier robot project Unitree Robotics, the college entrance planning service platform Shengdaxin Education, and the robot R & D company Yuanluo Technology. These projects cover multiple different fields, but most of them are strongly related to artificial intelligence.

It can be seen that Alibaba Group's strategic investment has a wider investment scope, covering both cutting - edge technologies and projects with high synergy with the main business.

In terms of the overall path, Alibaba's investment strategy has actually created a closed - loop of artificial intelligence capabilities, that is, it not only involves the competition for a favorable position in the upstream energy and computing power sectors but also extends to the mid - stream large models and downstream applications.

An industry insider analyzed to reporters from Venture Capital Daily that the layout of the upstream sectors can ensure scarcity and bargaining power in the competition of the AI industry; while the wide - spread investment across the entire industrial chain creates synergy space, which is conducive to the compound growth of Alibaba Cloud, e - commerce, payment, and other businesses.

However, the insider also admitted that this path also means high capital consumption and risks of technological uncertainty. "For this investment map to truly be transformed into a competitive advantage, it is necessary to ensure the coordinated implementation across departments and business lines."

JD.com, Ant Group, and Meituan: "Aggressive" Robot Hunters

If Alibaba is good at full - chain investment in AI, then Ant Group, Meituan, and JD.com have attracted attention due to their recent concentrated bets on embodied intelligence.

Ant Group's investment projects this year are highly concentrated in the embodied intelligence industrial chain. Xinghaitu, Stardust Intelligence, Unitree Robotics, and Lingxinqiaoshou are all its invested projects. While making equity investments, Ant Group has also established a subsidiary, Ant Lingbo Technology, dedicated to the field of embodied intelligence to develop robot products for home, elderly care, and medical and health scenarios.

However, Ant Group's investment layout in the field of artificial intelligence is not limited to embodied intelligence. Earlier, it also invested in AI application software projects such as Aishi Technology and Mita Technology and acquired the large - model startup project Frontier Technology.

An investment person familiar with Ant Group told reporters from Venture Capital Daily that there are different "investment channels" within Ant Group. "There are both internal strategic investment entities and market - oriented investment funds. These channels are like sibling units. They can cooperate or invest separately. Sometimes, there may even be some competitive relationships, especially when competing for project quotas."

The person further said that Ant Group's strategic investment logic can be essentially summarized as: finding entry points where it can exert its strength. "Ant Group is not a pure financial company. It also has the need to layout cutting - edge technologies. On the one hand, investment helps maintain its high - tech nature and capture opportunities in trendy sectors; on the other hand, it can activate idle funds and achieve capital turnover and appreciation."

Meituan has long been concerned about robots. As early as the rise of service robots, Meituan had invested in almost all the projects on the market. Well - known projects such as Pudu Technology and Gaoxian Robot have Meituan's investment behind them. Even Shihe Robot, which focuses on high - altitude operations, received investment from Meituan in its early stage. Therefore, Meituan's investment in embodied intelligence this time can be regarded as an extension of its long - term concern for the robot field, continuously following up and participating in the evolution of an industry through investment.

From a strategic perspective, Meituan has also continued its "sweeping - style" investment approach. Xinghaitu, Tashizhihang, Independent Variable Robot, Galaxy Universal, and Unitree Robotics are all invested projects of Meituan in the field of embodied intelligence. Except for Unitree Robotics, Meituan mostly participates in project financing as the leading investor.

Reporters from Venture Capital Daily also noticed that many of these investments were jointly made by Meituan and Meituan Longzhu. For example, in the A + round financing of Xinghaitu and the A round financing of Independent Variable Robot. A person close to Meituan Longzhu told reporters from Venture Capital Daily that Meituan Longzhu is a financial investor, and Meituan's strategic investment is for strategic purposes. "Some projects have both strategic and financial value, so they will be jointly invested in."

Different from Meituan's stable investment, JD.com is more like a suddenly emerging aggressive player.

If JD Cloud's investment in Zhiyuan Robot in May this year did not cause much of a stir, then the consecutive announcements of investments in projects such as Qianxun Intelligence, Zhujidongli, Zhongqing Robot, RoboScience, and Pacini since July are hard to ignore. It shows the strong force of JD.com in the field of embodied intelligence.

Previously, a person from one of the invested projects told reporters from Venture Capital Daily that for early - stage projects like embodied intelligence, in addition to considering the synergy of the landing scenarios, JD.com values more the combination of these projects' capabilities in data, cloud services, and large models with its own in the short term.

At the 2025 World Robot Conference held recently, reporters from Venture Capital Daily learned that JD.com's embodied intelligence brand JoyInside will soon be connected to robots such as Zhujidongli and Pacini.

ByteDance and Tencent: Observing Changes

During the downturn of large companies' strategic investment that started in 2022, ByteDance's adjustment was particularly significant. At the beginning of that year, in response to the rumor of completely abolishing the investment business, ByteDance said that the company conducted a review and analysis of its business at the beginning of the year and decided to strengthen business focus, reduce investments with low synergy, and disperse the employees of the strategic investment department to various business lines to strengthen the cooperation between strategic research functions and business operations.

In March of the same year, the Jinqiu Fund, initiated by Yang Jie, the person in charge of ByteDance's investment, was established. Most of the founding team members of this fund also came from ByteDance's investment team. The outside world sometimes regards the actions of the Jinqiu Fund as an extension of Zhang Yiming's will or ByteDance's strategy. The high focus of the Jinqiu Fund on AI and overseas markets indeed has strong synergy with ByteDance's business.

In April 2023, the Jinqiu Fund and ByteDance's Volcengine jointly launched an AI technology commercialization startup competition, providing different forms of support to participating enterprises. Volcengine provided computing power, large - model technology, and industry solutions, while the Jinqiu Fund screened high - potential projects and promoted business cooperation with Volcengine.

Since its establishment, the Jinqiu Fund has maintained relatively active investment activities. As of now, it has publicly announced 21 investment projects, including well - known projects such as Unitree Robotics and Shengshu Technology. However, ByteDance's internal strategic investment has remained silent.

As of now this year, ByteDance has only made an external investment in Yingmou Technology, a company dedicated to the generation and application of hyper - realistic virtual avatars. The major investment move made by ByteDance in recent years was the acquisition of the wearable audio device manufacturer Oladance in the first half of 2024.

However, prudence in investment layout does not mean slowness in promoting AI business. In fact, ByteDance's AI strategy is quite aggressive.

A visible window is that a person close to ByteDance told reporters from Venture Capital Daily that ByteDance's external sales KPI this year is 1 billion tokens per day, and the target for next year is 10 billion tokens per day. It can be seen that ByteDance has great ambitions in the commercialization of large models and strives to achieve a quantitative leap in computing power, products, and market expansion. To achieve this AI strategic ambition, ByteDance seems not interested in using strategic investment, unless it can directly acquire and absorb a project in one step. Instead, it relies on self - research and business implementation.

Tencent has been relatively cautious in this wave of AI development. An AI entrepreneur told reporters from Venture Capital Daily that from the perspective of being a cloud service provider, Tencent's industry influence is inferior to that of large companies such as ByteDance and Alibaba, and it is far less aggressive than the others in business expansion. From the C - end perception, after DeepSeek suddenly emerged at the beginning of this year and Tencent took a series of actions including promoting it, its AI layout has returned to relative calm.

In terms of strategic investment, Tencent has made a considerable number of investments this year, reaching a total of 21 projects. However, these projects are scattered in different fields, and there is no obvious trend of focusing on artificial intelligence. However, Tencent has participated in several leading AI projects, such as Zhiyuan Robot, Unitree Robotics, and Leju Robot in the field of embodied intelligence. Earlier, when large - model startup projects were intensively raising funds, Tencent also participated in the investment in MiniMax, Zhipu, etc.

However, several internet insiders familiar with Tencent told reporters from Venture Capital Daily that it is Tencent's usual strategy and characteristic to be prudent during the unclear period of the industry and then make efforts when the industry matures. "Especially in the field of AI applications, many current projects are built on top of the model layer. With the continuous evolution of model capabilities, there is still a lot of uncertainty in the entire application layer. Maintaining appropriate prudence and calmness may not be a bad thing."

From Alibaba's full - chain investment layout, to the concentrated bets of Meituan, JD.com, and Ant Group on embodied intelligence, and then to the restraint and differences of ByteDance and Tencent in investment, large companies' strategic investments in the AI era have shown very different paths. Behind this differentiation are their respective corporate genes, resource endowments, business structures, and risk preferences. However, regardless of the different paths, their goals are undoubtedly the same - to explore and layout any new technologies and new applications that may disrupt the status of giants and gain an advantageous position in the next round of competition.

Special statement: The content of this article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Investors shall bear the risks of any operations based on this information.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Venture Capital Daily", author: Ao Jin, published by 36Kr with authorization.