Alibaba Cloud backs AI video startup ShengShu with $293M funding round, intensifying competition in China’s crowded generative video space as tech giants race for dominance

$293M on ~$10M ARR — Alibaba isn't buying a video tool, they're subsidizing a future compute customer. ShengShu's pivot from Vidu video gen to "world models" and robot control (Motus, open-sourced Dec 2025) tells you the endgame: sell picks and shovels to every Chinese company that needs multimodal inference at scale. Four serious players (Kling, Hailuo, Vidu, Dreamina) all burning cash in the same lane while their cloud providers write the checks — it's the exact same playbook as AWS funding AI labs, except with Beijing's Internet Investment Fund in the cap table making sure the winners stay onshore.

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More coverage

• ShengShu AI Startup Raises $293M Led by Alibaba Cloud (startupresearcher.com)
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• ShengShu Raises $293M for AGI in Alibaba-Led Round - Ventureburn (ventureburn.com)
• Alibaba Leads $300 Million Bet on AI Video Platform ShengShu (bloomberg.com)
• Alibaba Leads $293M Round in AI Video Start-Up — Datagrom AI ... (datagrom.com)

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