China's Infrawaves raises $322M Series C, hitting 43B yuan total — record for domestic AI infra
智东西 · wechat · 2026-10-12
Chinese AI-native infrastructure startup Infrawaves (无问芯穹), spun out of Tsinghua's EE department, has closed a 2.3 billion yuan ($322M) Series C, bringing total funding to 4.3 billion yuan — a record for China's AI infra sector — with IPO preparations underway.
Key technical claims: first-ever heterogeneous 70B-parameter training across four domestic chips plus AMD/NVIDIA at 97.6% utilization; 70%+ reduction in domestic chip adaptation cost; 10x inference cost reduction in one year; 37,000+ P of compute across 16 chip types; 40x growth in daily token calls.
The company runs an asset-light, neutral "NeoCloud" model — owning no data centers, chips, or models — and its investor list spans state funds, Tencent, Baidu, Lenovo, Sequoia China, and Qiming. It positions itself against US peers like Fireworks AI ($17.5B valuation) and Baseten ($13B), arguing its multi-chip heterogeneous coordination is a uniquely Chinese requirement with room for valuation catch-up.
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