A Chinese artificial intelligence company has successfully secured $293 million in new investment funding as the global race for advanced AI technology continues to heat up.
ShengShu Technology announced Friday that it raised 2 billion yuan in financing, with Alibaba Cloud serving as the lead investor in the funding round.
The Beijing-based startup plans to use the substantial investment to create what it terms a “general world model” – technology designed to process sensory data and replicate human-like perception and interaction capabilities. Company officials describe this as progress toward developing artificial general intelligence that can function in real-world environments.
ShengShu has not yet announced when this advanced system might become available for commercial use.
The funding round attracted multiple investors beyond Alibaba Cloud, including Andon Haitang, China Internet Investment Fund, TAL Education Group, and Luminous Ventures. Previous backers LINK-X CAPITAL, Delta Capital, and Baidu Ventures also expanded their investments in the company.
Zhu Jun, a graduate of Tsinghua University, established ShengShu in early 2023. The company made headlines when it became China’s first firm to debut a video generation system, launching its Vidu platform in April 2024.
The Vidu system was designed to compete with OpenAI’s Sora technology, though the American company later discontinued that product. ShengShu has continued improving Vidu, releasing multiple enhanced versions including the Vidu Q3 model introduced this year.
The startup recently branched into robotics, releasing an open-source system called Motus in December 2025. This technology is designed to operate robots by analyzing various types of data including video and audio inputs.
ShengShu operates in an increasingly crowded marketplace, competing against major Chinese technology corporations like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Kuaishou, all of which have introduced their own video generation platforms.
On the international stage, the company faces competition from Google and various startups including Runway, which are also working on similar technological advances.
This type of “world model” technology is gaining attention across China’s tech industry, with companies ranging from social media giant ByteDance to robotics specialist Unitree exploring similar approaches to artificial intelligence development.
