Two heavyweight private equity bosses whose funds each manage more than 10 billion yuan have invested in a post-2000s young entrepreneur.

A controllable fusion company founded by post-2000s entrepreneurs has just secured a new financing round of hundreds of millions of yuan, with its valuation reaching 3 billion yuan.

Founded in August 2025, Weilan Star has successively completed three rounds of financing each worth over 100 million yuan in less than a year.

Looking at its shareholder list, many well-known names can be found. Leading institutions including Gaorong Venture Capital, Boyu Capital, Weihe Investment, Oasis Capital, Huilong Venture Capital, and Minyin International are all on the list, and AI industry player Xiwang Technology also participated in the financing with all top-tier institutions covered.

What is more noteworthy is that Liang Hong, founder of Siva Asset, and Wang Yiping, founder of Evolution Asset are also on the shareholder roster. The institutions led by the two have long ranked among the top 10 in the performance list of tens of-billion-yuan private equity funds, and are good at secondary market stock investment and quantitative trading.

The combination of the post-2000s founder, top tens of-billion-yuan private equity executives, and 3 billion yuan valuation makes the story of Weilan Star highly eye-catching. Behind this, the entire fusion track is experiencing a capital boom.

Returned from school suspension to build a company in less than a year

Xu Runlai, the founder of Weilan Star, is a post-2000s generation. He graduated from the University of Oxford with a bachelor's degree, studied stellarators during his PhD at Princeton University, and suspended his studies halfway to return to China to start a business.

When Weilan Star was first established, the entire team only had 5 physical design personnel. Today, the team has expanded to nearly 100 people, whose members come from universities including Princeton University, the University of Oxford, and Tsinghua University, covering fields such as fusion physics, superconducting magnets and AI.

The company adopts the stellarator technical route, which, together with tokamak, are the two mainstream technical directions of magnetic confinement fusion. Tokamak generates the confinement magnetic field by the current of the plasma itself, while the confinement magnetic field of the stellarator is entirely provided by external three-dimensional coils. This design is naturally suitable for long-time steady-state operation, but the cost is also obvious: the magnetic field configuration design is extremely complex, the coil manufacturing process has extremely high requirements, and the assembly accuracy is extremely strict.

To cope with these challenges, the team introduced AI into the R&D process, and self-developed the coil optimization tool NextOpt, which is specially used for scheme evaluation, parameter search, multi-objective optimization and engineering constraint coordination.

In terms of technology, Weilan Star has completed the physical scheme design of its first-phase device, the development of self-developed AI technology platform, the host engineering scheme and expert review; not long ago, it also completed the current-carrying test of the high-temperature superconducting stellarator model coil under the real working condition of cold helium gas plus conduction cooling, with the maximum magnetic field reaching 10.3 Tesla.

In terms of financing pace, Weilan Star has completed three rounds of 100-million-yuan level financing since its establishment for less than a year. This angel+ round of financing is hundreds of millions of yuan, and the post-money valuation exceeds 3 billion yuan. The main investors include Gaorong Venture Capital, Boyu Capital, Weihe Investment, Oasis Capital, Huilong Venture Capital, Minyin International, Xiwang Technology, etc.

In addition to primary market institutions, the most notable variable is the entry of Liang Hong and Wang Yiping. Liang Hong is the founder of Siva Asset, and Wang Yiping leads Evolution Asset. The institutions where the two work are both tens of-billion-yuan private equities, which have long occupied the top of the performance list. It is rare for top investors in the secondary market to cross into the primary market and bet on the fusion track nowadays.

The fusion track continues to heat up

In fact, this large-scale financing of Weilan Star is not an isolated case. Since the beginning of this year, more and more cross-border capitals are pouring into the fusion track, and dozens of fusion start-ups have obtained capital support so far.

According to statistics from IT Juzi, a total of 28 financing deals were completed in China's primary fusion market in the first half of this year, with the total financing amount exceeding 7.2 billion yuan. The number of financing events increased by 8 times year-on-year, and the financing amount increased by more than 233 times year-on-year.

At the same time when Weilan Star announced the financing, another fusion company Beta Fusion also disclosed its financing news: it successively completed hundreds of millions of yuan of seed round and seed+ round financing. Both rounds of financing were led by CATL, and participated by Dingfeng Kechuang (Wuyuefeng Venture Capital), Yunuo Capital, etc. This is CATL's "second increase in investment" in the company. In early June this year, CATL led the investment in the seed round financing of Beta Fusion.

Beta Fusion was established in December 2025, focusing on the pulsed field-reversed configuration fusion technology route. It is worth noting that this company is also the first fusion enterprise invested by CATL.

Looking further ahead, on June 30, Xinghe Fusion completed its first round of financing of 830 million yuan, with a post-money valuation of nearly 3 billion yuan, refreshing the record of the first round financing scale of domestic private fusion enterprises. This round of financing was jointly led by Hengxu Capital under SAIC Group, Shenzhen Venture Capital, and CAS Star, followed by institutions including Hundun Investment, Puhua Capital, Loongson Venture Capital, and Legend Star. Local state-owned assets such as Hefei Venture Capital and Hefei High-tech Investment, as well as A-share listed companies such as Zijin Mining and Zhongding Co., Ltd. also participated in the financing.

In June this year, many other fusion enterprises completed large-scale financing, including Juhe Fusion which completed hundreds of millions of yuan of angel round financing, with GL Ventures, HSG, and Tongchuang Weiye participating; Xingneng Xuanguang completed 500 million yuan of financing, led by Jinpu Investment and Ant Group.

Nuwa Fusion completed its 700 million yuan angel+ round financing in April this year, with investors including Alibaba, Meituan Longzhu, GL Ventures, Shangqi Capital, etc., followed by Junlian Capital, Gaorong Venture Capital, etc. This company was established in April 2025, and its cumulative financing has reached 1.2 billion yuan within one year of its establishment.

Looking back today, fusion has changed from a distant scientific research topic to a track that capital is willing to make heavy bets on. When hundreds of millions of yuan of financing are intensively invested in young teams that have only been established for one or two years, fusion has obviously gone beyond the walls of the laboratory.

Although the road to commercialization is still long, continuous breakthroughs in various technical routes have made capital see the possibility of landing and operation, and behind this, the real long-distance race has just begun.

This article is from WeChat official account "Xiao Zhuo Ban", author: Li Yupeng, editor: Zhang Lijuan, published with authorization from 36Kr.