Tsinghua-backed AI startup Naive AI raises $400M in three funding rounds

Naive AI, an AI startup founded by Tsinghua University associate professor Dai Jifeng, has raised a total of $400 million across three consecutive funding rounds, according to The Information on September 18, 2026. The latest round valued the company at $1.42 billion.

Investors include Tencent, IDG Capital, MPCi and HSG (formerly Sequoia Capital China). The three rounds raised $100 million, $180 million and $120 million respectively. Naive AI has a team of fewer than 100 people.

The company's first large language model, also named Naive, is nearing release and could launch as early as September 2026 with open weights, allowing users to download and further develop it. Instead of pretraining from scratch, Naive AI builds on an existing Chinese open-weight model, adjusting its structure and continuing training with reinforcement learning. The company is also exploring recursive self-improvement, an area also pursued by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.