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Alibaba Leads 2 Billion Yuan Round for ShengShu to Build a 'World Model' AI

The move signals a shift toward AI that learns from multimodal data to guide real-world systems.

Overview

  • ShengShu, which announced the deal Friday, raised 2 billion yuan led by Alibaba Cloud to develop a general world model.
  • Friday's raise follows a 600 million yuan round about two months earlier, with new investors including Andon Haitang, the China Internet Investment Fund, TAL Education Group, and Luminous Ventures.
  • Existing backers LINK-X CAPITAL, Delta Capital, and Baidu Ventures increased their stakes in a show of continued support.
  • The company says its world model will link perception to action by training on video, audio, and other sensors so AI can predict and control behavior in real environments.
  • ShengShu created the Vidu video generator and open-sourced the Motus robot-control model in December 2025, yet it set no timeline for commercialization and declined to disclose a valuation, as Alibaba also backs peers like Tripo AI and PixVerse and rivals such as ByteDance, Kuaishou, Google, and Runway push similar tools.