As the big model race enters its "regular season" finale and companies are collectively seeking IPOs, StepZen has chosen a completely different path to break through. Recently, StepZen announced a B+ round financing of over 5 billion RMB, not only setting a new record for single investment in the domestic big model sector in the past year, but also attracting a key figure to lead the company.
Top-tier capital support, record-breaking single investment
This round of financing was participated by well-known institutions such as Shangguo Investment Leading Fund and China Life Equity, while existing shareholders such as Tencent and Yishan Capital also chose to follow up. This scale not only exceeded the previous 500 million USD financing of Moonlight, but even surpassed the fundraising amount of some competitors' IPOs, showing the high recognition of the capital market for StepZen's strategic direction.
Renowned figure Yin Qi appointed as chairman
What shocked the industry more than the financing is the personnel changes: Yin Qi, founder of Megvii and chairman of Qianli Tech, has officially taken center stage and been appointed as chairman of StepZen.
Strong collaboration: The top technical "national team" composed of Jiang Daxin, Zhang Xiangyu, and Zhu Yibo has welcomed the most experienced business leader.
Strategic complementarity: Yin Qi's joining will be fully responsible for industrial implementation, compensating for the technical team's lack of business experience.
Core battlefield shift: AI goes beyond data centers
StepZen believes that the era of simply competing on parameters and Tokens has passed, and the core issue of the "playoff" starting from 2026 is: how to let AI take control of physical terminals.
Native multimodal: The ticket to enter the world
StepZen has persisted in the "native multimodal" approach, directly conducting end-to-end training, giving AI a sensory system similar to humans, rather than simple text conversion. Its audio model Step-Audio-R1.1 has achieved the number one position on authoritative rankings globally.
Terminal deployment: Dual drive of mobile phones and cars
In the mobile phone field: It has deeply collaborated with 60% of the top domestic brands (such as OPPO, Honor, ZTE), with an installed volume exceeding 42 million units.
In the automotive field: It has deeply empowered brands such as Geely Galaxy, integrating voice models into smart cabins, aiming for a vehicle installation volume of millions this year.
VLA architecture: From understanding to active interaction
It launched the first commercially deployable open-source GUI model in the industry, Step-GUI, enabling large models to have "screen reading" and "operation assistance" capabilities, transforming them into real intelligent agents.
While other players seek certainty through IPOs, StepZen, armed with substantial funds and partnering with Yin Qi, who has the ability to navigate cycles, is trying to build a complete closed loop from cutting-edge models to physical terminals. As the industry comments: Big models must be embedded in the framework of the physical world to gain lasting vitality.
