The vacation has not ended yet, and the valuation of the project has tripled.

At 9 a.m. on October 2, the sun over Sanya has heated the beach so hot that it burns the feet. Chen Ming's daughter squats at his feet, concentrating on reinforcing the walls of her sand castle, murmuring to herself: "Look, Dad, this is the moat."

Chen Ming replies "Mm" absent-mindedly, his eyes already drifting to the phone buzzing and vibrating in his pocket.

A WeChat notification pops up, sent by an old friend of his who invests in early-stage hard tech: "Bro, let me tell you something, don't spread it around — that embodied intelligence project has tripled its valuation."

Chen Ming stares at the message for three seconds, and the first thought popping up in his mind is not "congratulations", but four words: We missed it.

His daughter calls him from the side: "Dad, what are you doing? Help me carry water!" Chen Ming flips his phone face down on the beach towel, squats down to scoop up a spoonful of seawater, and thinks to himself: They reviewed this project in the last round, thought the price was too high back then, and hesitated for two weeks.

Two weeks, in this year's venture capital circle, is long enough for a project to complete two rounds of financing.

Not His Only Holiday Dilemma

A passage of sentiment from Sun Qi, founding managing partner of DaoTong Investment in Moments, has been forwarded repeatedly by peers: "One of our brain-computer projects has not yet completed the delivery, and the subsequent round of convertible debt has already raised 150 million yuan, with its valuation tripling within two months."

This is no isolated case.

Various versions of "blitzkrieg" stories are circulating in the industry this year: some institutions issue a TS to a project that only has one founder; some startups have closed two rounds of financing less than a week after their establishment; the valuation of some projects has taken a "rocket ride" and soared within two weeks.

The figures for the embodied intelligence track are more intuitive.

According to data from IT Juzi, in the first half of 2026, the total financing amount of the domestic embodied intelligence track has exceeded 900 billion yuan, 5 times higher than the same period last year; the number of financing events has exceeded 300, a year-on-year increase of 137%, and only in March and June, the number of single-month financing events both exceeded 60.

A detail that better illustrates that "the money has increased but not become dispersed" is: the average single financing amount of RMB funds for embodied intelligence has risen from 249 million yuan in 2025 to 550 million yuan, more than doubling.

There are quite a few embodied unicorns with a valuation of over 10 billion yuan, including Lingxin Qiaoshou, Galaxy General, Kuwa Technology, Smart Square, Zibianliang, Qianxun Intelligence, Zhiyuan...

An early-stage investor who has been deeply involved in the embodied intelligence field for many years and once led the investment in a leading star embodied project said in an interview with the media: "This year we have observed a very special development trend in the industry, which is also a rare phenomenon in the years of practice of practitioners — multiple capitals have formed a highly unified investment consensus on the embodied intelligence and robot track."

"Highly unified investment consensus", in plain terms, means: everyone is crowding at the same door to grab the share.

"Begging for Allocation" During the Holiday

To be honest, Chen Ming never thought he would send a message to the founder saying "can you leave some share for me" in the gap of building sandcastles with his daughter. But that's exactly how this year went for him.

Before setting off at the end of September, he had a round of discussion with an embodied intelligence founder, and everyone thought the offer the founder gave was on the high side, so he said "let me think about it". Unexpectedly, the three words "let me think about it" became the apology he said most often during the National Day holiday.

On October 4, Chen Ming called the founder in the lobby of a resort hotel in Sanya, with the background sound of children screaming in the children's playground. He lowered his voice: "Mr. X, our internal review has been approved, can you... reserve 5% of the share for us, we can send out the TS tomorrow."

The other party laughed on the other end of the phone: "Mr. Chen, you said the price was too high just last week."

Chen Ming said: "It is expensive, but now it's even more expensive."

The moment he said that, he even felt a little trance himself.

A month ago, they were still tangled about whether the valuation multiple was too high, and a month later, they took the initiative to chase the founder for share during the holiday. This situation was already complained about by an anonymous early-stage investor in the circle: now some founders say to investors — "no due diligence accepted, no performance commitment accepted, only ask if you can transfer the payment today, the price won't be the same next week."

Chen Ming later said in the partner group: "Some assets that were originally 10-year dimension stories have been compressed by market expectations to be realized within 3 years, leading to excessive overdraw of valuation."

Everyone admits this is correct, but few people really slow down because of it — because the price of slowing down is that you can't even get the "overdrawn valuation".

Everyone Knows There's a Bubble, But No One Dares to Get Off First

A few days later, Chen Ming finally got the share of that embodied intelligence project, but the price was much higher than a month ago. A partner sent a "celebration" emoji in the group, Chen Ming stared at the screen and smiled wryly, put the phone in his pocket, looked up and saw his daughter running towards him holding a shell.

This state of "body in Sanya, mind in Wudaokou" is, in the final analysis, a kind of occupational disease, even a kind of collective anxiety.

The seven-day National Day holiday is a rest for ordinary people, but for this industry, it is more like a risk exposure of "betting window" — you can't really completely disconnect from the internet, because you know that as long as you are offline for three days, you will most likely face two choices when you come back: either accept a more expensive price, or watch the project disappear from your funnel and appear in other people's annual summary PPT.

An investor once put forward a simple standard to judge whether a valuation is "ridiculous": if a large company buys the entire star project outright, can this price still hold up?

He guessed that for many companies on the market with a valuation of 10 billion or 20 billion yuan, if a large company really acquires the whole enterprise, the price will be cut by a large margin, and no one is even willing to take over — the reason is very simple, the primary market is essentially a "long-only" market, the price is determined by the highest bidder, but the liquidity is only a small part.

Judging by this standard, many high-valuation projects today may not stand scrutiny.

This set of standards is very simple, but few people really use it to screen projects this year. Because by the time you finish this calculation slowly, the project has long been "snapped up" by others with cash. In the past six months, names like Moore Threads, Muxi, and Zhipu have gone public one after another, with market value often reaching hundreds of billions, and tens of billions of paper returns are common occurrences.

This money-making effect is clearly visible to everyone, and Unitree Technology even completed the Sci-Tech Innovation Board review process in only 73 days. Everyone knows there is a bubble, but no one wants to be the one who "watches teammates eat meat while they themselves chew grass".

This is probably the most popular self-deprecating saying in the venture capital circle this year: in the long-lost booming venture capital year, everyone is afraid of missing opportunities, and no one dares to get off the bus first.

Back to Work After Holiday

On the last night of the holiday, Chen Ming sat on the hotel balcony, turned on his computer and wrote an internal memo, titled "Market Observation During National Day Holiday: Cold Thinking Behind the Crazy Surge of Valuation". Halfway through writing, he deleted the three words "Cold Thinking" and changed it to "What Else Can We Do".

To be honest, he doesn't know the answer. He only knows that the first thing to do when he returns to Beijing tomorrow is most likely to open the investment committee schedule, rather than sort out the photos taken in the past seven days.

This is probably a fairly typical story of an investor during the 2026 National Day holiday: body in Sanya, mind in Wudaokou, with a string always tensed in his heart — for fear that when he wakes up, the project he likes has seen its valuation rise again.

(The investor Chen Ming involved in this article is a pseudonym.)

This article is from WeChat Official Account "Rongzhong Finance", author: Abu, authorized to release by 36Kr.