Heart Capital Invests in Xi Wang's Series A, Continues to Bet on AI GPU Development | HeartStar PORTFOLIO

On January 22, Xi Wang (Sunrise), a tech company focused on extreme inference GPU chips, announced it had completed nearly 3 billion RMB in strategic financing within a single year, with Heart Capital investing in its Series A round. The funds will be used primarily for next-generation inference GPU R&D, scaled mass production, and ecosystem development.

Yan Han, Founding Partner of Heart Capital, stated: "Heart Capital was the first investor in the Xi Wang team when it spun off from SenseTime. In less than a year, the team has demonstrated top-tier execution and progress. We are very optimistic about Xi Wang's inference chip market prospects — following our pre-Series A investment in MetaX, this is our second major bet on an AI GPU chip company."

AI model training has now entered deep waters, and the operational efficiency, comprehensive cost, and stable performance of the inference phase are becoming the core determinants of whether AI technology can successfully achieve commercial deployment. The global AI industry's fundamental shift from "training dividends" to "inference dividends" has become unmistakable.

Three-Generation Chip Matrix Takes Shape

All-In on Inference GPUs, Aiming for a New Industry Benchmark

Sticking to its differentiated path of focusing exclusively on inference, Xi Wang has consistently optimized cost and efficiency around the core pain points of inference scenarios, undertaking a full-dimensional reconstruction of chip architecture. The company abandoned the traditional training-inference integrated GPU optimization approach centered on training. Instead, it has made native, deep optimizations for inference scenarios across core components including scheduling mechanisms, cache design, on-chip SRAM, chip interconnectivity, and compiler pathways — while integrating LPDDR memory technology to achieve significant reductions in per-Token inference costs.

On the technology R&D front, Xi Wang insists on original innovation and full-stack self-development, achieving independent control over key core technologies including instruction sets, GPGPU IP, and compiler toolchains. To date, the company has accumulated over 200 core patents. Its previously launched chip products have all achieved first-tapeout success, delivering on industry-leading technical commitments through solid R&D and engineering capabilities.

After years of technical accumulation and two billion RMB in R&D investment, Xi Wang has built a three-generation chip product matrix covering full-scenario demands, comprehensively addressing diverse application needs from visual inference to large model full-scenario inference, practicing its All-in inference long-termism through product strength. Specifically: the S1, its first AI inference chip mass-produced in 2020, was compatible with over 1,000 CV models; the S2 chip, mass-produced in 2024, deeply supports the CUDA ecosystem and smoothly runs inference on open-source large models including DeepSeek and Qwen, as well as mainstream text-to-image, text-to-video, and text-to-3D models; and the S3 chip, set for a major launch in 2026 and positioned as the "king of inference cost-performance," will achieve order-of-magnitude breakthroughs in per-Token cost and power consumption, with native support for FP8/FP4 low-precision inference, serving the new industry benchmark of "one cent per million Tokens" and providing core support for the large-scale democratization of large model inference applications.

Becoming the "P&L Optimizer" for China's AI Industry

"If we can reduce inference costs by 90% and provide more stable service, our competition isn't 'another chip' — it's 'rewriting the P&L of China's AI industry.'" This statement from Xi Wang Co-CEO Zhan Wang precisely captures the company's differentiated core positioning of going All-in on inference.

The company believes that for compute service providers and AI-native application developers, inference energy efficiency, SLA stability, and comprehensive Token costs are the core metrics determining business gross margins and end-user experience. Based on this, the company is firmly committed to the inference track, focusing on unit economics in real-world scenarios to become an "inference offloading and cost optimization layer" for existing compute systems. It is actively collaborating with domestic chip manufacturers to build dedicated inference acceleration zones for customers, constructing a mutually beneficial and win-win industrial ecosystem.

"Our goal is to radically reduce the cost and barrier to entry for large model inference, making inference compute accessible and widely available, thereby fully unleashing the complete potential of AGI." Wang said, adding that this is also the original intention behind Xi Wang's commitment to All-in inference.

As AI inference dividends are fully released, Xi Wang hopes to forge a distinctive path for Chinese enterprises in independently developing inference GPUs, ultimately achieving the critical leap for domestic AI chips from "following" to "differentiated leading." Going forward, Xi Wang will take technological innovation as its core driving force, continuously practicing its goal of "driving inference costs down," and contributing to the development of autonomous AI infrastructure and the democratization of compute in China.

Founded in 2022, Heart Capital is a China-based early-stage venture capital fund focused on technology and digitalization. Heart Capital's team is primarily composed of Yan Han, founding partner of Lightspeed China, core investors, a CFO, and seasoned investors from industry. The team's past investments include Series A investments in Xpeng Motors (NYSE: XPEV, 09868.HK) and Full Truck Alliance (NYSE: YMM), a pre-Series A investment in MetaX (688802.SH), as well as RoboSense (02498.HK), FinVolution (NYSE: FINV), LandSpace, Micro-nano Starry Sky, Huitian, Xi Wang, Polestones, Sunmi, World Logistics, Baichuan, Manbang Cold Chain, Fan Deng Reading, Lanhu, Starfield, and others. Rooted in China with a global outlook, Heart Capital is dedicated to finding true value in non-consensus. Heart Capital respects the value of "people" and advocates the potential of "heart," looking forward to accompanying more young Chinese entrepreneurs in strengthening China and going global.