China AI startups raised $35B in H1 2026, up 280% YoY and half of all VC funding
创业邦 · wechat · 2026-09-05
Chuangyebang's Ruishou Analytics H1 2026 AI report: Chinese AI startups closed 1,408 primary-market deals (+90% YoY) raising RMB 253.7B ($35B), up 279.9% YoY — 52.8% of all primary-market funding, rising to 59.5% in Q2.
Key numbers
- Top five: DeepSeek (RMB 51B Series A), StepFun (22B), Moonshot (18.3B), Zhiyuan/PLE Robotics (6B), Huashen Biotech ($787M) — together 40.5% of AI funding;
- Early-stage deals were 81.5%; 1,288 investors participated (+58%), with Qichuang Totem leading at 66 deals;
- 23 AI IPOs, 22 of them (95.65%) in Hong Kong, incl. Zhipu, MiniMax, Biren, Tianshu;
- Five cities took 89.4% of funding: Beijing RMB 81.2B first, Hangzhou 64.6B second on DeepSeek-led mega rounds.
By sector
- Embodied AI: 390 deals, RMB 111.1B (+353%), spanning robot makers, world models (World Labs $1B, AMI Labs $1.03B seed, ItShi $455M) and data (Guanglun, PAXINI at RMB 1B each);
- AI agents: 77 deals (+327.8%), RMB 6B, 76.6% seed-to-A;
- AI chips: Moore Threads, MetaX IPOed; Xiwang raised RMB 3B; GPU, 3D stacking and compute-in-memory all funded;
- Infra: storage, liquid cooling, optical interconnect and supernode deals active;
- AI4S: life science commercializing first (Huashen $787M B), materials and chemistry emerging.
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