AsianFin— Sunrise, a domestic AI chipmaker spun off from SenseTime’s core semiconductor division, has raised nearly $139 million in a Pre-A funding round as China intensifies efforts to localize high-performance GPU supply chains.
The round was backed by a consortium of prominent investors including Huaxu Fund (affiliated with SANY Group), 4Paradigm, Youzu Interactive, Beijing Li’er, Songhe Capital, and Haitong Kaiyuan. The proceeds will be used to accelerate R&D, expand market operations, and scale the engineering workforce, according to a statement from the company.
Chairman Xu Bing, who also co-founded SenseTime, framed the company’s mission as a strategic imperative. “China pays more than $13.93 billion annually in computing power tax,” Xu said. “In the AGI era, computing autonomy is as vital as oxygen.”
Spun off from SenseTime at the end of 2024, Sunrise has rapidly emerged as a full-stack developer of high-performance GPUs and multimodal inference chips. Xu leads the company alongside co-CEOs Wang Zhan, formerly a vice president at Baidu and architect of its Phoenix Nest ad system, and Wang Yong, a veteran of AMD and Baidu’s Kunlun chip unit, who later joined SenseTime in 2020 to head its chip division.
The 150-person team is comprised largely of former engineers from AMD, Alibaba, Baidu, and SenseTime. The company has reportedly achieved first-pass silicon success with two generations of chips.
Sunrise’s roadmap targets large model inference, with an emphasis on multimodal AI. Its first product, the S1, is a vision inference chip designed for cloud-edge video analysis, already shipped in volumes exceeding 20,000 units. The S2 is a general-purpose GPU compatible with the CUDA ecosystem and benchmarked against NVIDIA’s A100. It has entered mass production with tens of thousands of units reportedly shipped. The upcoming S3, expected in 2026, is being built on a fully self-developed architecture aiming to cut inference costs by up to 90%.
The company’s broader platform strategy spans hardware accelerators, large model servers, and compute clusters, supported by a proprietary software stack and full-cycle deployment services. Key verticals include intelligent computing centers, financial services, smart manufacturing, and city-scale AI infrastructure.
The rise of Sunrise coincides with a structural shift at SenseTime, which in late 2024 reorganized under a “1+X” strategy. That framework centers the company’s generative AI business while spinning off units in sectors such as robotics, healthcare, and automotive technology. Sunrise has become the flagship of SenseTime’s chip ambitions within this restructuring, with SenseTime CEO Xu Li attending its recent financing ceremony.
According to corporate registry data, Sunrise operates under Hangzhou XiWang Xinke Intelligent Technology, wholly owned by Shanghai Zhenliang Intelligent Technology. Wang Yong is listed as legal representative.
In May, Beijing Li’er, a Shenzhen-listed refractories firm, and its chairman Zhao Wei invested a combined $34.83 millionin Shanghai Zhenliang at a pre-money valuation of $208.95 million. Despite the valuation, Sunrise has yet to reach profitability. Financial filings show revenue of just $33,520 in 2024 and a net loss of $26.47 million. In Q1 2025, it reported no revenue and a $3.18 million loss. As of March, total assets stood at $13.13 million, with net assets of $11.72 million.
Still, Sunrise’s funding success reflects mounting investor appetite for domestic GPU challengers. In March, Biren secured backing from the state-led Guotou Leading Fund. On June 30, MetaX and Moore Threads saw their IPO applications accepted by the Shanghai STAR Market. The activity underscores Beijing’s ongoing push to secure control over advanced compute infrastructure as geopolitical and supply chain pressures mount.
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