Chinese AI startup Qianxun Intelligence, founded in January 2024, has completed a 1 billion yuan funding round that closed on April 7, bringing its total fundraising over the past 30 days to 3 billion yuan, or approximately $413 million. The latest round was co-led by Shunwei Capital, the venture fund of Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, and Yunfeng Capital, the investment vehicle of Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma. According to reporting by 36Kr, this marks the first time that Lei Jun and Jack Ma have co-led an investment in the same company, a detail that has attracted significant attention in China’s startup ecosystem, given the two men’s status as the country’s most prominent technology entrepreneurs.
From Founding to 3 Billion Yuan in 15 Months
The speed of Qianxun’s fundraising is remarkable even by the standards of China’s current AI investment boom. The company was founded in January 2024 by a team of researchers with backgrounds at leading Chinese AI labs and universities. Its core focus is on agentic AI, systems that can use tools, maintain memory across sessions, and execute complex multi-step tasks autonomously, rather than simply responding to individual prompts. This positions Qianxun at what many investors consider the most commercially promising layer of the current AI stack: the interface between powerful foundation models and real-world business processes.
The 2 billion yuan first round, completed in February 2026, was already one of the largest early-stage AI raises in Chinese history. The additional 1 billion yuan closed in April, just 30 days later, suggests that investor demand for Qianxun’s equity significantly exceeded the initial allocation. The combined 3 billion yuan values the company at over 20 billion yuan, a valuation that reflects not just the company’s current capabilities but the enormous market opportunity that investors see in enterprise AI agents across China’s manufacturing, logistics, finance, and services sectors.
Why Lei Jun and Jack Ma Are Betting on AI Agents
The co-investment by Lei Jun and Jack Ma is significant not just as a headline but as a strategic signal. Both men have deep interests in the AI agent space that extend beyond financial returns. For Lei Jun, whose Xiaomi has been aggressively integrating AI into its smartphone and smart home ecosystem, an investment in a leading AI agent platform provides both a financial stake in the sector’s growth and a potential technology partnership. For Jack Ma, whose Alibaba has been investing heavily in its own AI capabilities through the Qwen model family and the Tongyi platform, the investment in an independent agent startup suggests a recognition that the agentic AI layer may develop best outside the constraints of a large incumbent organization.
The fact that the two men chose to co-lead this particular round also reflects a broader shift in China’s AI investment landscape. In the early years of the current AI boom, the dominant narrative was about foundation models — who could build the most capable large language model. That race has increasingly consolidated around a small number of well-capitalized players. The agentic AI layer, by contrast, remains wide open, with dozens of startups competing to become the platform through which enterprises deploy AI capabilities in their operations. Qianxun’s rapid fundraising suggests that investors believe it has the team, technology, and go-to-market strategy to emerge as a category leader.
The Agentic AI Race in China
Qianxun’s success is part of a broader surge of investment in Chinese AI agent startups. The category has attracted billions of yuan in funding over the past six months, as enterprises across China’s economy begin to move beyond experimentation and toward production deployment of AI systems. The Chinese government’s “AI Plus” initiative, which aims to integrate AI into every major sector of the economy by 2030, has created a powerful demand signal for companies that can deliver practical, deployable AI solutions, exactly the kind of product that agentic AI platforms are designed to provide.
For Qianxun, the immediate priority will be converting its fundraising momentum into customer deployments and revenue growth. The company has reportedly signed pilot agreements with several large Chinese enterprises in the manufacturing and financial services sectors, and its leadership team has indicated that it plans to use the new capital to expand its engineering team, accelerate product development, and build out its go-to-market capabilities. With 3 billion yuan in the bank and the backing of two of China’s most prominent entrepreneurs, Qianxun is well positioned to compete, but the agentic AI market is crowded, and execution will be everything.
The broader significance of Qianxun’s fundraising round extends beyond the company itself. It is a data point in the ongoing debate about whether China’s AI investment boom is sustainable or whether it represents a bubble. The speed and scale of the funding, 3 billion yuan in 30 days, from two of the country’s most experienced and disciplined investors, suggests that at least some of the most sophisticated capital allocators in China believe the agentic AI opportunity is real and large. For international observers, it is a reminder that China’s AI ecosystem is not just producing impressive models and chips, it is also generating the kind of venture-backed startup activity that drives long-term innovation and competitive dynamism.