- The tech giant led AIsphere’s latest funding round as competition in AI video generation accelerates
- The investment extends Alibaba’s strategy of backing multiple AI leaders while expanding its generative content ecosystem
Alibaba has led the latest Series C funding round of AI video startup AIsphere (爱诗科技), bringing the company’s cumulative fundraising to 2.98 billion yuan ($440 million) as China’s internet giant deepens its bets on AI-generated video.
The Series C+ round was led by Alibaba, with participation from Lollapalooza Capital, Ivy Capital, Mirae Asset Management, BlueFocus and more than a dozen other domestic and international investors.
The investment marks Alibaba’s second backing of Beijing-based AIsphere after leading its $60 million Series B round in September 2025.
The deal comes just days after Kuaishou’s Kling AI secured nearly $3 billion in fresh funding, with Alibaba also appearing among the investors.
Together, the two financing tranches underscore growing investor confidence that AI video generation is emerging as one of the first large-scale commercial AI applications beyond coding assistants.
Alibaba’s broader strategy
Alibaba’s latest investment also reflects a broader strategy that has already played out across foundation models and embodied AI: combining in-house model development with investments in leading startups, cloud computing infrastructure and ecosystem partnerships.
The company has previously backed major foundation model developers including MiniMax, Moonshot AI and Zhipu AI.
Additionally, it has invested in more than two dozen embodied AI companies, including Unitree (宇树科技), Robot Era (星动纪元) and LimX Dynamics (逐际动力).
AI-generated video now appears to be the next pillar of that strategy.
Founded by former ByteDance visual technology head Wang Changhu (王长虎), AIsphere says its PixVerse platform has surpassed 150 million users across 177 countries and regions.
Its latest PixVerse R1 model is designed for real-time video generation at 1080p resolution.
Competitive landscape
China’s AI video industry is increasingly competing on proprietary datasets and engineering capabilities rather than model architecture alone.
Rich short-video ecosystems and highly digitized e-commerce platforms provide Chinese developers with abundant training data and commercial deployment scenarios that are difficult to replicate elsewhere.
For Alibaba, AI-generated video also fills a critical gap in its broader AI portfolio, complementing its investments in foundation models, cloud infrastructure, embodied AI, AI coding and healthcare AI.
What it means for global readers
With OpenAI discontinuing Sora earlier this year and Google slowing updates to Veo, Chinese AI video companies see an opportunity to narrow the competitive gap.
Alibaba’s investment strategy suggests it is less interested in picking a single winner than building an ecosystem around multiple market leaders.
The wave of funding signals that AI video is entering a new phase where commercial adoption—not just technical performance—will determine global leadership.
