34-year-old Tsinghua graduate created a billion-dollar unicorn in 28 months.

Established just 28 months ago, the billion-dollar unicorn burst out of Beijing. On February 11, sensory intelligence company Xinghaitu announced the completion of a 1 billion RMB Series B financing, with a valuation exceeding 10 billion RMB, which will be used for iterations of sensory basic models, expansion of hardware production capacity, and the development of a global developer ecosystem. In the field of sensory intelligence, this is the fourth billion-dollar startup in China, following Yushu, Zhiyuan, and Galaxy General. Xinghaitu's founder and CEO Gao Jiyang is 34 years old. He graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University and then pursued a Ph.D. in Computer Vision at the University of Southern California. He later joined autonomous driving companies such as Waymo and Momenta, leading the development and mass production of full-stack intelligent driving algorithms before the age of 30. In September 2023, Gao Jiyang and his partner Zhao Xing co-founded Xinghaitu, combining cutting-edge algorithms with mass production experience in autonomous driving, aiming to create a "brain" for universal sensory intelligence, compatible with various robot bodies, to achieve large-scale implementation. Five months later, the two received tens of millions of dollars in angel investment, and starting from 2025, they have successively completed Series A financing rounds, in addition to the 1 billion RMB Series B financing, bringing the total amount of financing to nearly 3 billion RMB. In 28 months, Xinghaitu's valuation has grown more than a hundredfold.