Sequoia Capital China

Kunwei Technology has raised RMB 400M ($57M) in a new funding round. New investors XVC and Sequoia Capital China joined, while existing backers Sherpa Healthcare Partners and Tencent increased their stakes. The Shenzhen company says it applies deep neural networks to low-frequency ultrasound echo processing to image midbrain nuclei, lateral ventricles and microvascular blood flow through the skull in real time. It has won orders worth tens of millions of yuan (several million dollars) from brain-computer interface labs and NeuroAI model companies. Valuation and lead investor were not disclosed.

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.

Non-invasive AI brain-computer interface company BCI-Sonics (华超神控) has raised $28M (RMB 200M) in a Pre-A round led by Sequoia Capital China and Yunqi Partners. Bilinxing Investment, Oriza Holdings, Xuhui Sci-Tech Investment and Deshi Investment joined, while existing backers Matrix Partners China and Delian Capital added on. The money will go to product R&D, core hiring, clinical research and AI infrastructure.

The company uses ultrasound neuromodulation, multimodal brain reading and AI neural decoding, and plans to take its closed-loop ultrasound brain-computer system into clinical trials by Q1 2027. Valuation was not disclosed.

Founded in 2023, Guanglian Xinke (光联芯科) closed an A+ round in August 2026 at a valuation above $1 billion, calling itself the first unicorn in optical interconnects. Sequoia Capital China has participated in four consecutive rounds; the round amount was not disclosed.

At the September 9 Shenzhen CIOE, it showed the ZW1000 maskless programmable silicon-photonic lithography tool, which uses laser annealing to tune microring resonances. Claimed specs: error under 10 picometers, a 5-hour wafer process, and yield from below 10% to 99% — all company figures without independent or customer-line verification.

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.

Maniformer, a one-stop physical AI data service platform, has raised hundreds of millions of yuan (tens of millions of dollars) led by China Telecom. Zhangjiang Group joined, and existing investors Sequoia Capital China and Yuanqi Innovation made oversubscribed additions. Funds will scale mass production of MEgo no-body acquisition products, strengthen data-stack capabilities, and accelerate tens of millions of hours of physical interaction data. The company has worked with Ant Lingbo to supply training data for the LingBot-VLA 2.0 model.