Laihua raises 30M CNY from New Oriental for AI video generation

What's the deal? Chinese AIGC company Laihua.com has raised 30 million CNY (about $4.4 million) in a growth equity round led by New Oriental. The company specialises in AI video generation and visual intelligence agent technology.

What's the endgame? Laihua is building a proprietary "visual intelligence engine" that combines controllable video algorithms for mixed text-and-image generation with digital human video generation. The goal is AI that can, in the company's words, "看得懂、说得对、演得真" — understand, respond correctly, and perform convincingly.

By the numbers: The company says its engine draws on a data foundation of 18 million animation assets, 60,000 hours of curated corpus, and more than 30 million interaction data points.

The signal: Backing from New Oriental — a company rooted in education — points to growing interest in AI video and digital humans as tools for content and instruction, a fast-moving corner of China's generative AI market.

Image credit: Generated with Gemini