a16z raises $15 billion, China IPO listing: The Capital Divide in US-China AI Competition

When China’s leading AI enterprise MiniMax and Zhipu AI just listed on the capital market with a market value of over one trillion yuan, the other side of the Pacific @a16z announced the completion of a $15 billion fundraising — this amount accounts for nearly one-fifth of all US venture funding in 2025.

This is not just a capital event, but a profound gaze between two national capabilities and two innovation paradigms in the technological era.

1️⃣a16z: Super VC - The Capitalization of National Will

In the industry winter, $15 billion has long transcended the category of “ammunition.”

It is a banner, declaring that top-tier venture capital has advanced to an “informal executive agency” of national strategy.

It invests not in companies, but in the certainty that “America must win.” LPs use $15 billion to buy an insurance policy for this certainty.

With its unbeatable historical track record, government relations, influence, and ability to build cycles, a16z undertakes this glorious yet arduous mission.

2️⃣Two paths: Long-term Market Capital vs Strategic Guidance

Behind a16z are “super-long-term capital” such as pension funds and endowments. Its logic is “reverse growth” — heavily betting during market fears, providing ultimate credit for the country’s technological narrative with capital.

This is a “visionary alliance” that deeply stitches market capital with national will.

China’s path, on the other hand, is “strategic-led capital.” Government-guided funds, local industrial capital, and market funds are mixed-driven, pushing leading enterprises to go public quickly within top-tier planned tracks, leveraging secondary market liquidity to feed R&D.

This is “using national direction to attract market vitality and quench industrial thirst.”

3️⃣Expeditionary Forces and Group Armies: Two survival logics of AI

The US’s @OpenAI and @AnthropicAI are “expeditionary forces protected by capital.” They conduct AGI expeditions on a decade scale within the fortress of “patience capital,” without needing to deliver short-term performance to the stock market.

Technological deification comes first, commercial realization follows.

China’s Zhipu and MiniMax are “group armies bearing multiple missions.” Due to the constraints of RMB fund lifecycle and exit pressures, going public is inevitable.

They must, while breaking through frontier large models, quickly prove the commercial closed loop, drive the industrial chain, and transform new productive forces.

One side is focused on top resources to build airplanes; the other is building airplanes while preparing for takeoff on the runway, and also selling tickets.

4️⃣The true watershed: When VC begins to answer national questions

While most VCs are still asking “when will tokens be issued?”, a16z is asking: “What will enable the US to win in the next 100 years?”

VC’s perspective has risen from exit returns to national capability, and VC itself has become a national strategic asset.

Therefore, when we ask “When will China have its own a16z,” the real question might be: When can we cultivate an ecological soil that allows the ‘a16z model’ to take root?

This soil needs:

• Genuine “long-term capital”: enabling pension funds and insurance funds to dare to flow massively into early-stage venture capital, paying for dreams twenty years ahead;

• Tolerance for “strategic losses”: allowing top tech companies to conduct primary exploration in non-listed states, rather than being forced to calculate ROI early on;

• A higher-dimensional trust space: enabling private capital to define the future jointly with the state at the frontier, not just executing blueprints.

a16z’s $15 billion is essentially “capital creating waves”: using market forces to stir the tide, attempting to push the national vessel toward its chosen shore.

The high market value of China’s AI giants, on the other hand, is “riding the water”: leveraging the waves stirred by national strategies to advance at full speed in the capital channel.

Our proposition may not be about praising a certain model.

But about how to nurture the kind of courage and capability to sail into the unknown deep seas, or even to create waves with one’s own hands.

Because ultimately, it is never the wave-riders skilled in calculation who define the course of the era;

But those who dare to create new charts in uncharted waters for themselves and their times.