StepFun

StepFun (阶跃星辰) is a Chinese foundation-model company built around two strategic pillars — "foundation models" and "AI + devices" — and a Qiming Venture Partners portfolio company: in January 2026 it closed a B+ round of over RMB 5 billion, the largest single deal in China's LLM sector in the prior 12 months, earmarked for base-model R&D and its device strategy . Its model line follows a "1+2" matrix — language foundation models (three generations so far, with the open-source Step 3.5 Flash and the June 2026 Step 3.7 Flash aimed at agent, coding and multimodal workflows) plus full-modality and cloud-device hybrid models; on the commercialization side, per Qiming's reporting, its models shipped in over 42 million phones across OPPO, Honor and ZTE flagships, and its AgentOS cockpit with Geely and Qianli Technology powered the Galaxy M9, which sold nearly 40,000 units in its first three months . It has also pushed into enterprise and consumer agent products — a May 2026 strategic partnership with Kingdee on AI-native enterprise software, and subscription/cloud-agent offerings like Step Plan and StepClaw . Outside observers are less bullish: a July 2026 piece by 葬AI placed its model capability in a broadly acknowledged second tier, noting its recent moves such as investing in embodied-robotics startup 原力灵机 and unveiling an AI-agent phone at WAIC .