CODE27 Raises Over $10 Million, Led by Qiming Venture Partners
Building an immersive interaction platform dedicated to exclusive AI characters.
Recently, AI virtual character interaction team CODE27 announced the completion of consecutive angel and angel+ funding rounds, with total financing exceeding $10 million. Qiming Venture Partners co-led the angel+ round.
CODE27 is built by a global team whose hardware core members come from DJI and EcoFlow, bringing hands-on experience from multiple million-unit global hardware products. The company is dedicated to building an immersive interaction platform for personalized AI characters.
AI technology is now permeating everyday life, yet its interactive experience remains notably lacking: either dominated by text-based command interactions with no situational awareness or immersion, or lacking authenticity and agency, making deep emotional connection difficult. Human-AI interaction still largely stays in ChatBot mode, heavily dependent on flat-screen devices like phones and computers. AI remains a tool that users must actively launch, with low switching costs and easy distraction — unable to truly integrate into daily life. The market urgently needs more lifelike, longer-term front-end interactive experiences. CODE27 believes that AI characters with visual form and multimodal interaction capabilities will become one of the endgame forms of human-computer interaction.
CODE27 enters Japanese offline retail channels
Along this direction, CODE27 launched an AI character interaction device. Users can upload custom virtual character models and engage in real-time dialogue and interaction through multimodal interaction. The product focuses on bidirectional immersive multimodal interaction that "hears, sees, responds, and remembers," aiming to create more lifelike virtual character experiences better suited for long-term companionship.
In their view, hardware's value lies in providing ritual and physical anchor points for relationships. From badges and acrylic stands to figurines and body pillows, users have consistently used physical objects to anchor relationships. Desktop devices make abstract companionship concrete: breathing lights, sounds from across the room, touch and feedback.
On the software side, CODE27 refines AI capabilities into a system closer to real companionship relationships. Multimodal understanding places conversations back in context; manageable retrieval and decay mechanisms for long-term memory preserve what truly matters in a relationship; behavioral strategies and boundary constraints stabilize tone and interaction rhythm. Hardware makes it present in space; software makes it continuous in time.
CODE27 launched on Kickstarter in April 2025, raising over $1.9 million. Recently, CODE27 went live in the Japanese market, with first-day sales exceeding 85 million yen and cumulative sales surpassing 140 million yen.
CODE27's future product iteration will proceed on two levels: in the near term, continuously optimizing AI interaction capabilities, launching more IP collaborations and interactive experiences, while gradually adding practical functions like smart home control and schedule management, and exploring more open capability extension frameworks and external task execution capabilities.
In the longer term, CODE27 aims to build a platform centered on character creation and co-creation. The team plans to open a plugin marketplace, allowing users to customize and share AI character appearances and capabilities, even create exclusive storylines. The team hopes CODE27 users can become creators of their own virtual companions — both audience and participant.
The angel round was led by SIE Industrial Fund, with PlugandPlayChina, Cornerstone Capital, and other leading market-oriented funds participating; the angel+ round was co-led by Qiming Venture Partners and HSG.
Past Coverage
Qiming Weekly | Top 10 News from Qiming Venture Partners Portfolio Companies Vol.09, 2026.3.17
Founded in 2006, Qiming Venture Partners currently manages 11 USD funds and 7 RMB funds, with total assets under management reaching $9.5 billion. Since its inception, the firm has focused on investing in outstanding early and growth-stage companies in Technology and Healthcare.
To date, Qiming Venture Partners has invested in over 580 high-growth innovative companies, of which more than 210 have listed on the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited, Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, or exited through M&A and other means. Over 80 portfolio companies have become recognized unicorns or super-unicorns.
Many Qiming Venture Partners portfolio companies have grown into the most influential companies in their respective fields, including Xiaomi (01810.HK), Meituan (03690.HK), Bilibili (NASDAQ:BILI, 09626.HK), Zhihu (NYSE:ZH, 02390.HK), Roborock (688169.SH), Hesai Technology (NASDAQ:HSAI, 02525.HK), UBTECH (09880.HK), WeRide (NASDAQ:WRD, 0800.HK), HyperStrong (688411.SH), Insta360 (688775.SH), Unisound (09678.HK), Biren Technology (06082.HK), Zhipu (02513.HK), Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals (603087.SH), Tigermed (300347.SZ, 03347.HK), Zai Lab (NASDAQ:ZLAB, 09688.HK), CanSino Biologics (688185.SH, 06185.HK), Schrödinger (NASDAQ:SDGR), MicroPort EP MedTech (688617.SH), Sanyou Medical (688085.SH), Amoy Diagnostics (300685.SZ), GenScript ProBio (688520.SH), Insilico Medicine (03696.HK), Hope Medicine, Yuanxin Technology, MediLink Therapeutics, LaNova Medicines, StepFun, and others.