IDG Capital

Former ByteDance intern and Peking University PhD student Tian Keyu has raised $30M (RMB 210M) from 5Y Capital and IDG Capital at a $200M valuation for his roughly 10-person world-model lab. The company says its 200,000-symbol visual dictionary can compress and predict video, reducing cost per second by at least an order of magnitude. It plans to train on about 100 million hours of video for robotics, autonomous driving and interactive video, with release expected in 2027. Tian previously paid $71,000 (RMB 500,000) over a ByteDance lawsuit about model-training interference.

China’s largest single financing for an AI agent startup has closed at over $500 million (RMB 3.352 billion) for Butterfly Effect, parent of Manus. Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led the round, with existing investors Tencent, Sequoia Capital China and ZhenFund participating. Foreign media had reported the company was seeking a $4 billion valuation, double its prior $2 billion. The funding follows the late-September release of Manus 2.0 and Cue, built on the Cascade framework.

Butterfly Effect (Manus) has raised over $500M (RMB 3.352B) in a new round led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with existing backers Tencent, Sequoia Capital China, and ZhenFund participating, making it the largest single round for a Chinese agent-native startup. The company resumed independent operations on Sept 1 after shareholders bought back equity at a $2B valuation. It did not specify use of funds, but posted 17 Beijing roles across product, R&D, operations, and growth on announcement day.

A reported RMB 50B ($7.1B) round would value DeepSeek at RMB 500B ($71B), with closing targeted by end of October. Founder Liang Wenfeng told investors annualized revenue has reached $1B, more than double from under $500M a few months ago. The new investors were not named; in June the company raised about RMB 50B at a post-money valuation near RMB 400B ($57B), with Liang contributing RMB 20B, Tencent RMB 10B, and CATL RMB 5B. Shanghai STAR Market IPO preparations are also progressing.

Three months after ByteDance spun off its AI drug discovery unit as Anew Labs, the company has closed a $290M first independent financing round (RMB 2.03B). Investors include Sequoia Capital China, IDG Capital, GL Ventures (Hillhouse), 5Y Capital, and Gaorong Capital, along with several unnamed domestic pharmaceutical groups as strategic backers. What the proceeds will fund was not disclosed.