A spate of financing deals for domestic AI chips have been intensively completed.
The AI chip track is ushering in a window of intensive financing.
According to incomplete statistics from reporters of *Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily*, at least 10 AI chip-related enterprises completed new rounds of financing in October this year, many of which reached the level of 10 billion yuan. The invested enterprises cover directions such as computing-storage integration, server CPU, intelligent driving and embodied intelligence.
The rise in financing density resonates with the structural changes on the demand side for the localized development of domestic high-end computing power. Independent forecasts released by Bernstein Research in December 2025 show that Nvidia's share in China's AI semiconductor market may drop from about 40% in 2025 to around 8% in 2026; a TrendForce report in August 2026 points out that the shipment volume of China's high-end AI chips in 2026 will increase by more than 83% year-on-year, and the market share of domestic solutions is expected to be close to 90%.
Computing-storage and 3D Stacking Tracks Continue to Attract Capital
Focusing on the storage wall bottleneck of large model inference, different enterprises enter the AI computing chip track from paths such as integrated computing and storage, 3D stacking, and new-type memory. Storage architecture innovation has become the relatively concentrated direction of financing in October.
MicroNeoCore announced on October 28 this year that it had completed the C2 round of financing exceeding 10 billion yuan, led by Jiantou Investment, with Hangzhou Capital, Kaite Capital, Xiaochi Capital, Yantai Finance, SDIC Taikang, and Lingyang Fund participating as follow-on investors. Combined with the C1 round of financing completed in September, the company raised more than 20 billion yuan in two months, and completed a total of 30 billion yuan of financing in half a year. The funds from the C2 round will be invested in chip iteration, customer testing, software stack adaptation and upstream supply chain stock preparation.
MicroNeoCore was founded in Hangzhou in 2021. It pioneered the 3D-CIM integrated architecture of "3D near-memory + SRAM computing-storage + RISC-V heterogeneous computing-storage". Its products cover end-side and cloud-side inference. The company's first three chips, the LP-CIM and PCIe-CIM series, have all been taped out, and customer testing and mass delivery are expected to start in early 2027. Ye Le, the founder and chairman, is an associate professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Integrated Circuits of Peking University, and has published nearly 20 papers in top integrated circuit journals such as ISSCC, JSSC, and TCAS-I.
Suanmiao Technology, which also lays out in the 3D architecture direction, disclosed the Pre-A2 round (including its joining round) and Series A financing in October, led by state-owned capital platforms at the municipal and district levels in Beijing such as Yizhuang State Investment. The company has accumulated nearly 20 billion yuan of financing in the past year.
Suanmiao Technology was founded in Daxing, Beijing in November 2022. It pioneered the 3D TokenPU architecture, and its first-generation 3D TokenPU product A4E was taped out in June this year, adopting a hybrid bonding scheme of memory wafers and logic wafers. The company expects the first-generation product to achieve mass production in 2027. Wang Fuquan, the founder, chairman and CEO, is a doctor and researcher from the Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and later did postdoctoral research at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with Hu Weiwu, the chief scientist of Loongson, as his cooperative supervisor.
Another financing came from Mingxin Qirui, a memory technology enterprise. The company completed the Series A financing of over 400 million yuan on October 19, led by Boyuan Capital, followed by Bosch Venture Capital, Chuangling Capital, miHoYo, Zhongguancun Science City, GigaDevice and others, with China Development Bank Science and Innovation, Xiaomi Strategic Investment continuing to increase their investment. The funds will be used for the industrialization of RRAM resistive memory and the R&D of the first-generation LPU. It is worth noting that the company also introduced Lu Tao, former president and general manager of Greater China of Graphcore, as CEO and co-founder.
Compared with enterprises that are still promoting the verification of their first-generation products, Jiutian Ruixin already has a certain mass production foundation. The company disclosed a new round of equity financing in October, with Zhiwei Capital and miHoYo Strategic Investment joining, and old shareholders Yinghao Capital and Weihao Core adding excess investment, accumulating 1 billion yuan of financing in the past six months. Jiutian Ruixin takes SRAM computing-storage integration as the core, and its existing SRAM computing-storage products have achieved mass production and sales, with end-side cooperation with vivo, Honor, Lenovo and other enterprises. The new generation of chips that vertically stack HBF and SRAM still needs follow-up R&D and tape-out.
Early-stage projects are also not absent. Siminwei Integrated Circuits completed the angel round financing of 100 million yuan level in October, with ZTE participating as an industrial investor, and Bohua Capital, Songqing Capital and others participating together. The company focuses on 3D stacked inference chips, and its first-generation products are still in the stage of tape-out promotion.
In addition to special inference chips, general-purpose server computing chips have also received large amounts of financing. On October 12, Lanxin Computing Power disclosed nearly 2 billion yuan of Series B round of financing, with old shareholders such as Shenzhen Venture Capital, Huakong Fund and Longqiu Capital adding investment, and Suzhou Venture Capital, GigaDevice, CCB International entering the market.
Lu Shan, the founder of Lanxin Computing Power, graduated from the Department of Automation of Tsinghua University with a bachelor's degree and Boston University with a doctorate. He used to be an IP engineer at Intel and a chip engineer at Qualcomm, and joined ByteDance's US team in 2019 as the person in charge of the RISC-V and server chip project. The company's self-developed LX500 chip completed tape-out and was lit up in February 2026; in July, the Lenovo Ask WR5219 G5 equipped with this chip was off the production line and mass-produced at Hefei LCFC factory, officially positioned as "the world's first mass-produced RISC-V+AI server". According to the company's disclosure, it has received more than 200,000 chip orders from customers such as Lenovo, China Mobile, and Tencent Cloud, and the chips and complete machines have been off the production line and mass-produced.
Embodied Intelligence Computing Power Receives Increased Capital Investment
Automotive and robot applications are providing more product verification opportunities for AI chip enterprises.
Xinxin Hangtu disclosed the strategic round of financing in October, with Groupe Renault investing for the first time, Chery Automobile adding investment, and Changxin Technology participating in the investment. The company has accumulated nearly 5 billion yuan of financing in history.
Xinxin Hangtu was incubated by the Momenta chip team, and designs computing chips for large models of intelligent driving. On October 29, the company released the X7 Ultra with a computing power parameter of 700 TOPS, and disclosed that its existing X7 series has shipped more than 200,000 pieces in total in eight months of mass production, equipped in 10 mass-produced models, and has received orders for more than 40 models.
The self-developed chip business of auto companies presents another financing method. On October 16, Li Auto announced that its chip subsidiary Mahe Xin Technology signed the first round of equity financing agreement, with a total subscription amount of 1.625 billion yuan, of which Li Auto itself contributed 1 billion yuan, and external investors subscribed 625 million yuan. Hangzhou Jingtao, BlueRun Ventures and Huaye Tiancheng participated as lead investors. If the maximum additional subscription right of 500 million yuan is fully exercised, the post-investment valuation of the company can reach 17.1 billion yuan, and Li Auto will still maintain controlling stake. Its self-developed Mahe M100 chip adopts 5nm automotive-grade process, with a single-chip computing power of 1280 TOPS, and has been equipped in mass-produced models of Li Auto.
Xinji Infinite, which extended from the automotive control business to robot computing power, completed the Pre-A round of financing in October. The investors include Zhiyuan Robot, Anhui Provincial Automotive Innovation Center, Guoyuan Equity and Hefei Baohe Venture Capital. The specific amount has not been disclosed. This round of financing will focus on supporting the R&D and industrialization of embodied intelligence RISC-V chips.
Xinji Infinite was founded in Shanghai in 2023, and its technology comes from the relevant research team of the School of Integrated Circuits of Tsinghua University, positioning itself as a "RISC-V computing power base for both automotive-grade and embodied intelligence tracks". According to the company's disclosure, its automotive-grade intelligent motor control MCUs have shipped more than 1 million pieces in total, and the newly signed orders in 2026 reach 5.2 million pieces; the XC64AE chip for embodied intelligence has started mass production verification.
The financing and business direction of Huixi Intelligence have been adjusted synchronously. It completed the Pre-B+ round and Series B round of financing in October, totaling about 1.7 billion yuan. The financing funds will be mainly used for the R&D and delivery of new-generation embodied intelligence computing chips, and its cumulative equity financing in 2026 exceeds 2.5 billion yuan. On October 28, Huixi Intelligence went through the registration of listing guidance at the Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau.
The company was founded in 2022. Xu Ningyi, the founder, is a doctor from the Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University, and used to be the head of the hardware computing group of Microsoft Research Asia and the chief architect of the intelligent chip department of Baidu. The company extends its original high-level intelligent driving chip capabilities to the embodied intelligence computing platform. Its Guangzhi R1 series has received thousands of domain controller orders, and the landing scenarios include Zhiyuan Elf G2, Lepu Kuavo Kuavo 4 Pro factory production line robots, Jiushi Intelligent L4 unmanned logistics vehicles, etc.
State-owned Capital, Industrial Capital and Auto Companies Lay Out at the Same Time
From the perspective of investors, local state-owned assets and industrial funds have a high participation rate.
The C2 round of MicroNeoCore was led by Jiantou Investment, with Hangzhou Capital and others participating; the two rounds of Suanmiao Technology were led by state-owned capital platforms at the municipal and district levels in Beijing such as Yizhuang State Investment; Lanxin Computing Power introduced Shenzhen Venture Capital and Suzhou Venture Capital in this round; Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund and Beijing Robot Industry Development Investment Fund appeared in the investor list of Huixi Intelligence. For chip projects with high R&D investment and long mass production verification cycle, the continuous investment of local funds helps to cover multiple product stages.
In terms of industrial capital, enterprises in the upstream and downstream of the chip industry and terminal application manufacturers all participate, making strategic layouts along the business chain. GigaDevice participated in the investment of Lanxin Computing Power and Mingxin Qirui; miHoYo participated in the investment of Mingxin Qirui and Jiutian Ruixin; ZTE made a strategic investment in Siminwei; Zhiyuan Robot continuously bet on Xinji Infinite and Huixi Intelligence; Meituan Strategic Investment, Starway Capital under XPeng Motors and OmniVision also appeared in the shareholder sequence of Jiutian Ruixin.
It is worth noting that whole-vehicle enterprises are also deepening their capital layout in the upstream chip link. In this round of financing of Xinxin Hangtu, capital related to Groupe Renault was introduced, Chery Automobile continued to add investment, and together with auto companies such as SAIC that had already entered the shareholder list before, a situation where many whole-vehicle enterprises jointly hold shares was formed. Li Auto itself subscribed 1 billion yuan for this round of financing of Mahe Xin Technology, and at the same time introduced external investors such as BlueRun Ventures and Huaye Tiancheng, and continued to maintain controlling stake.
Synthesizing the financing samples of AI chip-related enterprises in October this year, capital's attention to AI chips is not limited to a single technical route, but is multi-point laid out along storage architecture innovation, server computing power and intelligent terminal applications.
The core products of most invested enterprises have their mass production nodes in 2027 or later, and the financing amount has reached the 10-billion-yuan level. As some projects enter the stage of customer verification and batch supply one after another, the subsequent order fulfillment and operating income will become an important basis for observing the development progress of the enterprises in this round of financing.
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily", author: Dai Jiayi, authorized for release by 36Kr.