Chaoyan Raises Nearly $56M to Build Self-Evolving AI

The big picture: Chaoyan, founded in June 2026, has completed its Angel and Angel+ rounds, securing a cumulative total of nearly 400 million yuan (approximately $56 million USD). The company focuses on building next-generation self-evolving foundation models, aiming to transform AI from an auxiliary tool into a co-researcher for scientific discovery.

Why it matters:

• Beyond execution: While current AI excels at engineering and execution, Chaoyan aims to push AI into the realm of scientific breakthroughs and research, where human ingenuity remains critical.
• Rethinking R&D: The company posits that the next technological revolution will see AI become a native research engine, actively discovering the unknown rather than merely accelerating known tasks.
• Broad impact: Chaoyan’s self-evolving AI systems are designed for high-value, high-labor-density, and high-trial-and-error cost R&D fields, including chip design, molecular research, and quantitative strategy iteration.

How it works:

• Recursive Self-Improvement: Chaoyan’s core technology enables models to improve themselves through iterative training, guiding creative idea generation and autonomous ‘hypothesis-experiment-validation-iteration’ cycles.
• AI Scientist Network: The long-term vision is to create a scalable ‘AI researcher network’ of self-evolving foundation models, with collective research capabilities equivalent to over 100,000 top AI scientists across various disciplines.
• Demonstrated capabilities: Chaoyan’s AI system has already achieved research output comparable to a PhD-level AI researcher, with results accepted by top AI conferences. It has also proven the Youchao Conjecture (优超猜想) and achieved breakthroughs in optimization theory and geometric topology.

The catch: Chaoyan’s ambitious long-term vision for an ‘AI scientist network’ will require sustained investment in foundational models and compute, alongside attracting top global talent, in an increasingly competitive and capital-intensive frontier AI landscape.