Global AI Funding Tops 110B Yuan in Q1; Domestic LLMs Raised Over 30B Yuan in May

The AI venture capital market continues to heat up, according to CCTV News. In the first quarter, nearly 600 funding rounds occurred globally in the AI sector, totaling over 110 billion yuan — a 185.4% surge year-over-year. By May, the domestic venture capital scene remained active, with local large-model companies like Moonshot and StepStar securing massive rounds exceeding 30 billion yuan. Meanwhile, the embodied intelligence space also drew significant investor interest, with startups such as Vito Dynamics and Luming Robotics closing several billion yuan in funding within a single week.
As funds pour in rapidly, AI startups' capital allocation has become highly concentrated, targeting three major strategic areas: first, foundational R&D. By 2025, leading large-model companies had already set R&D budgets reaching tens of billions of yuan, far exceeding their revenue at the time. Second, computing infrastructure, where GPU purchases and cloud service rentals typically account for 30% to 50% of total fundraising. Third, the competition for top global talent and teams.
High-intensity R&D spending is sharply accelerating the conversion of technological breakthroughs into real-world applications. By 2026, the technology iteration cycle for Chinese large-model companies has typically shortened to under three months, alongside a notable drop in AI inference costs. This inflection point in technical maturity and cost, driven by concentrated capital investment, is pushing the AI industry to evolve from "technical breakthroughs" toward "large-scale applications," thereby speeding up the commercialization of artificial intelligence.
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The AI venture capital market continues to heat up, according to CCTV News. In the first quarter, nearly 600 funding rounds occurred globally in the AI sector, totaling over 110 billion yuan — a 185.4% surge year-over-year. By May, the domestic venture capital scene remained active, with local large-model companies like Moonshot and StepStar securing massive rounds exceeding 30 billion yuan. Meanwhile, the embodied intelligence space also drew significant investor interest, with startups such as Vito Dynamics and Luming Robotics closing several billion yuan in funding within a single week.
As funds pour in rapidly, AI startups' capital allocation has become highly concentrated, targeting three major strategic areas: first, foundational R&D. By 2025, leading large-model companies had already set R&D budgets reaching tens of billions of yuan, far exceeding their revenue at the time. Second, computing infrastructure, where GPU purchases and cloud service rentals typically account for 30% to 50% of total fundraising. Third, the competition for top global talent and teams.
High-intensity R&D spending is sharply accelerating the conversion of technological breakthroughs into real-world applications. By 2026, the technology iteration cycle for Chinese large-model companies has typically shortened to under three months, alongside a notable drop in AI inference costs. This inflection point in technical maturity and cost, driven by concentrated capital investment, is pushing the AI industry to evolve from "technical breakthroughs" toward "large-scale applications," thereby speeding up the commercialization of artificial intelligence.
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