AI chip unicorn raises 2.4 billion yuan after Jensen Huang poached its core team

An AI chip unicorn whose entire core team was poached by Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang has secured 2.4 billion yuan in new financing, according to a 36Kr report.

The backstory is dramatic: Huang had taken the company's core talent wholesale, leaving outsiders questioning the startup's future.

The closing of this 2.4 billion yuan round shows that even after losing most of its key people, the company can still command significant capital for its technology assets and accumulated work.

The deal lands against a backdrop of white-hot competition in AI chips and surging demand for compute, where investors continue to price chip capabilities aggressively.

For Huang and Nvidia, the talent war was already won; for the unicorn, financing is only the first step — rebuilding the team and shipping products are the real tests ahead.

Large funding rounds are common in the AI chip sector, but raising big money so quickly after a wholesale talent raid is rare, which gives this deal particular signal value.

What to watch next: how the funds are deployed, how the company rebuilds its team, and whether its chips can reach volume production and enter key data-center workloads.