---
title: "Weekly Global AI Hotspots | Star Era Pre-A ~¥300M; Lightmatter $400M; Shanghai ¥10B AI Fund"
author: "Unique Research"
sourcePublication: "Unique Research (FFCAP English library)"
originalPublishedAt: "2024-10-21T16:40:00+08:00"
canonical: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20241021a06a2300"
source: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20241021a06a2300"
language: "en"
cnSourceUrl: "https://view.inews.qq.com/a/20241021A06A2300"
---

# Weekly Global AI Hotspots | Star Era Pre-A ~¥300M; Lightmatter $400M; Shanghai ¥10B AI Fund

_Unique Research · Company / Weekly Digest · October 21, 2024_

## China funding

**Star Era (星动纪元)**: nearly ¥300M Pre-A led by Clearwater Capital, Yuanjing Capital, Alibaba (Ceyuan following). Founded by Tsinghua AP Chen Jianyu — native general embodied agents: robot foundation models + AI-defined hardware. Commercialized STAR 1 humanoid (6th gen) and XHAND 1 dexterous hand. Proceeds: R&D + humanoid commercialization.

**Wangsi Tech (网思科技)**: ¥100M+ cumulative after Paradigm Fund exclusive A+ — AI LLM app services / MaaS for industry models; digital twin for smart manufacturing.

## Overseas funding

**Dottxt**: $11.9M — structured generation for LLMs (Outlines team); guide model _outputs_ not prompts; Bayesian-stat background; grow team & adoption before full commercialization.

**Lightmatter**: $400M Series D at $4.4B valuation led by T. Rowe Price (Fidelity, GV) — photonic interconnect so hundreds of GPUs sync (up to 30 Tbps; 1,024 GPUs in custom racks). Interest from Microsoft, Amazon, xAI, OpenAI; next: optical substrates for denser networking.

## Industry moves

**Shanghai AI Ecosystem Fund** lands in Xuhui — ¥10B total, first tranche ¥3B. Lead: Shanghai State Investment with Xuhui Capital, Lingang Holdings, Caohejing, miHoYo, SenseTime, Bilibili. Manager: Shanghai Guotou Futeng. Focus: AI infra, foundation & vertical models, next-gen edge apps. Already strategic with MiniMax, StepFun; LOIs with Wuxi Core, CAS Jiahe, BaseFlow, Mita, Kupasi, Lingchuan Yuheng, Yike Energy, Xingyun Aidian (some first rounds).

**Boston Dynamics × Toyota Research Institute**: TRI large behavior models (LBMs) on electric Atlas — overnight training can reach ~90% accuracy on home tasks (e.g. frying pancakes). CEO Robert Playter: accelerate useful general humanoids.

**Perplexity**: WSJ reports ~$500M raise at ~$8B valuation (vs SoftBank-era $3B last summer); ~15M queries/day; ~$50M ARR. Publisher scraping disputes ongoing; CEO Aravind Srinivas open to publisher deals.

**Mira Murati** (ex-OpenAI CTO) raising for a new AI startup.

## People

**Jiang Tianyu** (ex-Xiaoice CIO) → PixelBloom CFO. **Dane Stuckey** (ex-Palantir CISO) → OpenAI security leadership.

— END —

---

Editorial English edition published on UniqueCapital: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20241021a06a2300
On-site reading page: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20241021a06a2300