Lingchuan Technology raises $138M Series B for AI video chips

The RMB 1 billion Series B, about $138M at current rates, was jointly led by Yitang Shenghe Fund, tied to Yizhuang State Investment, Qiming Venture Partners and Zhaohui Capital. Guotai Haitong Kaiyuan, Huakong Investment, a China Life fund, CDH Baifu and several industrial investors joined, and earlier shareholders added capital. No valuation was reported.

Lingchuan was set up by Beijing Artificial Intelligence Fund and Kuaishou Group, growing out of Kuaishou's heterogeneous computing division. According to the reporting, its chips already run live streaming and cloud workloads at Kuaishou, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu Cloud and Bilibili. Proceeds will fund next-generation chip work, mass production and overseas expansion.

For builders, the round shows domestic capital backing custom silicon for video and multimodal models, where deployment at large platforms is the proof point investors want. Founders targeting Chinese buyers should track which chip stacks win those anchor customers, since model choice may depend on it.