Baichuan Intelligence pushes toward 2027 IPO after raising $700M as China’s AI race heats up

China’s second-most valuable AI startup is setting its sights on the public markets, and the timeline is aggressive. Baichuan Intelligence, founded in April 2023 by Wang Xiaochuan, is advancing fundraising plans with a target IPO in 2027, according to remarks Wang made during a January 13, 2026 media briefing.

The company hasn’t formally kicked off the IPO process yet. But when your Series A round pulls in roughly 5 billion yuan, about $700 million, the public markets start feeling less like an aspiration and more like an inevitability.

A startup that skipped the awkward phase

The company’s Series A closed in July 2024, raising approximately 5 billion yuan, somewhere in the $690 million to $700 million range. That round valued Baichuan at over 20 billion yuan, which works out to more than $2.7 billion.

The investor list reads like a who’s who of Chinese tech. Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi all participated, alongside municipal AI investment funds.

That valuation made Baichuan the second-most valuable AI startup in China, trailing only Moonshot AI.

Why this matters beyond Silicon Valley

DeepSeek, another prominent Chinese AI firm, is reportedly planning to file for a mainland IPO also targeting a 2027 debut, following a $7 billion funding round.

Wang Xiaochuan’s background adds another layer. Before founding Baichuan, he built his reputation as the former CEO of Sogou. The company’s focus on large-language models places it squarely at the center of China’s push to develop domestic AI capabilities.

The investment angle crypto watchers should care about

Baichuan Intelligence has zero connection to crypto. No token, no blockchain protocol, no web3 pivot. This is a pure-play AI company funded by traditional venture capital and strategic corporate investors.

For crypto markets, the dynamic creates an interesting tension. AI tokens and AI-adjacent blockchain projects have been among the strongest narratives in crypto over the past two years. But the serious, institutional-scale AI investment is happening almost entirely in the traditional equity world. Baichuan’s $700 million Series A alone dwarfs the total fundraising of most AI-crypto projects combined.

That gap between the narrative value of AI in crypto and the actual capital deployment in traditional AI could widen further as companies like Baichuan and DeepSeek approach their IPOs. Public listings would give institutional investors a direct, regulated way to gain AI exposure, potentially reducing the appeal of token-based proxies.

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