ModelBest raises US$687.5M for edge AI, valuation tops US$2.75B
What's the deal? Chinese AI startup ModelBest has raised more than US$687.5M in a late-stage venture round, PE Daily reported. Investors include national-level funds, central state-owned enterprises, automotive manufacturers, and financial backers.
By the numbers: The financing lifts ModelBest's valuation past US$2.75B, making it the highest publicly disclosed valuation among China's edge-side intelligence companies. It ranks among the largest late-stage venture rounds in Chinese enterprise software over the past four years.
What's the endgame? Incubated from Tsinghua University's NLP Lab and founded in August 2022, ModelBest builds foundational large models designed to run on edge devices rather than in data centres. In February 2024 it launched MiniCPM 2.4B, which it describes as the world's first edge-side foundational large model.
Chief scientist Zhiyuan Liu has framed the bet as a structural shift. He argues edge-side AI is "an inevitable layer" in the move from the information revolution to the intelligence revolution, comparing it to how computing shifted from mainframes to personal devices.
Why now? ModelBest reached its valuation four years after launch, against the backdrop of China's crowded "Hundred-Model Battle" among large model developers. Its team also published the Densing Law, which measures model capability density and featured as a Nature cover paper in 2025.
The signal: The round shows China's AI funding concentrating in specialised players with distinct technical positioning. By backing an edge-focused developer with state funds and industrial investors, capital is flowing toward on-device intelligence — a bet that AI will increasingly run outside the data centre.
Read more: eu.36kr.com
Image credit: jurvetson