Linear Capital's seed-round lead portfolio company Deep Principle has closed a nine-figure RMB Pre-A strategic financing round, with existing investor Linear Capital increasing its stake.

As global AI technology accelerates its restructuring of industrial landscapes, Deep Principle, a standout company in the AI for Science (AI4S) track, has officially announced the completion of a hundred-million-yuan Pre-A strategic funding round. The investors in this round include Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group, Legend Star, Jinqiu Fund, Baidu Venture, and Qigao Capital. Existing shareholders Hillhouse and Linear Capital continued to increase their stakes. Mingde Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. The proceeds will accelerate the industrial deployment of the company's ReactiveAI technology platform in critical sectors including new materials, energy, and pharmaceuticals — marking China's entry into a period of explosive resonance between technology and industry in the AI4S domain.

A Tripartite Foundation: AI4S Builds the Microscopic Bedrock of the Intelligent Era

While ChatGPT sparked a cognitive revolution in the virtual world and humanoid robots opened the door to intelligent transformation in the macroscopic physical world, Deep Principle's ReactiveAI technology platform is achieving precise manipulation of the microscopic molecular world. These three pillars of intelligence are jointly constructing what investors have dubbed the "AI New Infrastructure Iron Triangle," reshaping the underlying architecture of human civilization.

"AI is bringing change to the world across all dimensions: virtual and physical, macroscopic and microscopic. Compared to large language models and embodied intelligent robots, which are more easily perceived intuitively, AI4S carries far more profound and challenging significance for the material world," Deep Principle founder and CEO Haojun Jia said in an interview. "But the most important chapters of human history are often named after materials — think of the civilizational thread from Stone to Bronze to Iron. The new molecular opportunities brought by AI4S could transcend the industrial level entirely."

The ReactiveAI Platform: Decoding the "AlphaGo Moment" of Materials Science

Deep Principle's ReactiveAI platform employs generative AI and quantum chemistry to deeply analyze the operating mechanisms of the microscopic materials world, achieving three major technical breakthroughs: its ReactGen module, based on generative algorithms, can generate tens of millions of potential new molecules and chemical reactions, rapidly expanding the pool of valid candidates in chemical space; its computational high-throughput screening process enables fast, cost-effective quantum chemical feature mining and calculation, performing multi-objective optimization and efficient screening of candidate molecular structures; and through high-throughput synthesis platforms completing wet-lab validation, it builds a complete data closed loop. This trinity architecture of "machine learning–computation–experimentation" dramatically enhances materials R&D efficiency. Its breakthrough progress rivals the cognitive revolution triggered by AlphaGo, driving a comprehensive paradigm shift in materials science.

Strategic Synergy: Tech Giants Build an AI4S Ecosystem Community

The investor matrix in this funding round demonstrates a high degree of strategic synergy: leading enterprises across major technology sectors will provide substantial support to the company in critical technical dimensions including computing infrastructure, algorithm engineering, and data collaboration. Qigao Capital brings deep industrial deployment in new materials. Combined with the accumulated expertise of seed-round strategic shareholders XtalPi and DP Technology in the AI4S domain, Deep Principle has assembled a roster of top-tier strategic shareholders. Thanks to this robust resource support, in less than a year since its founding, the company has already secured orders from multiple leading enterprises in new materials, new energy, and pharmaceuticals, and is actively advancing related delivery work.

About Deep Principle

Deep Principle is a global-leading technology innovation company in AI for Chemistry/Materials, dedicated to accelerating materials and chemistry innovation through artificial intelligence. The company's core mission is to integrate AI, quantum chemistry, and high-throughput experimentation (HTE) technologies, applying generative AI and first-principles calculations to chemical reactions to form multi-level, multi-precision workflows. This overturns the traditional "top-down experimental trial-and-error" model of chemical materials discovery, completing a closed-loop process of materials discovery, property prediction, formulation optimization, and controllable experimentation in minimal time, significantly accelerating chemical materials R&D innovation.

The team is led by founder and CEO Dr. Haojun Jia and founder and CTO Dr. Chenru Duan, comprising scholars from top domestic and international institutions including MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Fudan University, as well as professionals from globally renowned enterprises including Microsoft, Meta, Dow Chemical, BASF, Saint-Gobain, JD.com, and Tencent.

About Linear Capital

Linear Capital is an early-stage investment institution focused on the "frontier technology + industry" direction — that is, frontier technologies represented by data intelligence, digital new infrastructure, next-generation robotics technology, and new technological transformations in traditional domains (such as biomedicine, materials, and energy), applied across vertical industries to substantially improve industrial efficiency, empower solutions to pain-point problems, and complete industrial upgrading. Through substantial enhancement of industrial value, it achieves excess returns in commercial value. It currently manages ten funds with total assets under management of approximately $2 billion.

Our investment stage focuses primarily on leading angel to Series A rounds, with investment amounts ranging from $1 million to $10 million (or RMB equivalent) per project.

To date, we have invested in over 120 early-stage teams including Horizon Robotics, Kujiale, Sensors Data, Tezign, Rokid, Guandata, and Agile Robots. The combined valuation of Linear Capital's portfolio companies is approximately $20 billion.

In the near term, Linear Capital is striving to become the premier "Data Intelligence Technology Fund," and in the long term, gradually build itself into the most influential "Frontier Technology Application Fund."