The Chinese artificial intelligence sector has minted a new unicorn at an unprecedented pace. 36kr reports that Beijing-based Jijia Vision officially completed a nearly 1.5 billion yuan Series B1 financing round on April 16, 2026. This massive capital injection brings the company’s total funds raised to 2.5 billion yuan in just one month, pushing its valuation past 10 billion yuan. With this milestone, Jijia Vision becomes the first domestic unicorn dedicated specifically to the development of world models and Humanoid Foundation Models (HFMs).
The speed and scale of Jijia Vision’s ascent highlight the intense concentration of capital flowing into foundational AI research in China, particularly in areas that bridge digital intelligence with physical embodiment. As the global race for artificial general intelligence (AGI) accelerates, Chinese investors are aggressively backing teams developing the complex spatial and temporal reasoning systems required for next-generation robotics.
A Luxurious Syndicate of State and Industrial Capital
The investor lineup for Jijia Vision’s Series B1 round reads like a who’s who of China’s strategic technology capital. The round was jointly invested by a prominent technology giant, multiple top national-level funds, and significant corporate venture capital (CVC) arms. Key participants include Jianling Capital (the CVC of Yili Group), Puhua Capital, Huafu Investment, Yida Capital, New Industrialization Fund, Qianrong Capital, Shengjing Jiacheng, Turing Asset Management, and Kaiyang Capital.
Furthermore, the round saw heavy participation from top-tier state-owned platforms and industrial capitals across various regions, including Wuhan High-tech Investment Group, Guiyang Jin Investment Group, and Shandong Industrial Investment. Multiple existing shareholders, such as Huakong Fund, Huamin Investment, Yicun Capital, and Lingyang Investment, continued to over-invest, signaling immense confidence in the company’s trajectory.
This latest round follows a nearly 1 billion yuan Pre-B round announced in early March 2026. That previous round brought in top-tier capital from the chip and automotive industries, including SMIC Juyuan, Shanghai Semiconductor Industry Investment Fund, Linxin Capital, Xingyuan Capital, and Wanlin International. The presence of semiconductor-focused funds underscores the deep hardware-software co-design required to run complex world models efficiently.
The strategic backing from Huawei Hubble, which co-led the Series A1 round in November 2025, remains a critical validator for Jijia Vision. Huawei has publicly identified world models as the top technological trend for the intelligent world in 2035, and its investment in Jijia Vision is accompanied by strategic cooperation across multiple business lines. This aligns with broader industry trends where major tech players are securing stakes in foundational AI technologies, similar to how BlueRun Ventures recently closed China’s largest early-stage dual-currency fund to focus on AI and hard tech.
The Post-90s AI Genius Behind the Vision
At the helm of Jijia Vision is Huang Guan, a post-90s doctor at Tsinghua University whose career trajectory mirrors the rapid evolution of China’s AI industry. Huang’s background combines top-tier academic research with extensive engineering and commercialization experience—a rare and highly sought-after profile in the current AI landscape.
Huang’s academic journey began at the School of Automation at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, followed by a master’s degree at the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a doctorate at Tsinghua University’s Department of Automation. During his studies, he interned at Microsoft Research Asia, positioning him among the earliest domestic scholars to conduct in-depth research into deep learning.
His professional experience is equally formidable. Joining Horizon Robotics in 2016 as the head of visual perception, Huang led the creation of WebFace260M, the world’s largest face recognition dataset at the time, and drove the large-scale implementation of these technologies in smart city projects. He later co-founded Jianzhi Robotics, where he oversaw the autonomous driving business and led the development of the highly regarded BEV (Bird’s Eye View) model series.
Huang’s scientific accolades include winning the COCO Challenge held by ECCV in 2020 and securing the world’s first place in the NIST-FRVT face recognition evaluation in 2021. Under his leadership, the BEVDet model ranked first in pure-vision 3D object detection on the authoritative NuScenes dataset. This deep expertise in visual perception and spatial understanding forms the technical foundation for Jijia Vision’s ambitious goals.
Pioneering Humanoid Foundation Models and 3D World Engines
Founded in June 2023, Jijia Vision is not building standard large language models (LLMs). Instead, the company is focused on Humanoid Foundation Models (HFMs) and a native 3D world engine designed specifically for loco-manipulation—the complex, whole-body coordinated movements required by advanced robots.
World models represent a paradigm shift in AI. While LLMs excel at processing and generating text based on statistical patterns, world models aim to understand the physical laws, spatial relationships, and temporal dynamics of the real world. For a humanoid robot to navigate a cluttered room, manipulate novel objects, or anticipate the consequences of its actions, it requires an internal representation of how the physical world operates.
Jijia Vision’s proprietary 3D world engine simulates these complex environments, providing a robust training ground for embodied AI systems. By mastering loco-manipulation, the company aims to address one of robotics’ most significant bottlenecks: enabling machines to perform dexterous tasks while maintaining balance and mobility in unstructured environments.
This focus on embodied AI places Jijia Vision at the forefront of a critical technological frontier. As Chinese tech companies race to build their own chips and AI systems, the ability to seamlessly integrate advanced world models with physical hardware will be a key differentiator. The company’s rapid funding success suggests that investors view its technology as a foundational layer for the next generation of intelligent machines.
Assembling an AI Dream Team
To execute this vision, Huang Guan has assembled what industry insiders describe as an “AI Dream Team.” Co-founder and Chief Scientist Zhu Zheng brings deep expertise from the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University. Co-founder Sun Shaoyan offers extensive commercial and product experience, having previously served as a director at Alibaba Cloud and general manager of the data closed-loop product line at Horizon Robotics. Partner and Engineering Vice President Mao Jiming, formerly an architect at Baidu and the head of Baidu Apollo’s simulation technology, brings crucial experience in building large-scale, complex simulation environments.
This combination of academic rigor, engineering prowess, and commercial acumen has clearly resonated with investors. The team’s ability to secure 2.5 billion yuan in a single month—amidst a generally cautious venture capital environment—speaks volumes about the perceived strategic importance of their work.
As Jijia Vision scales its operations and accelerates the development of its humanoid foundation models, it is well-positioned to play a central role in China’s broader AI ambitions. With a valuation now exceeding 10 billion yuan, the startup has transitioned from a promising early-stage venture to a heavyweight contender in the global race to build the foundational intelligence for the physical world.