Founders Fund and Khosla tour China’s AI labs — learning trips, not cheques
What's the deal? Despite slashed U.S. venture checks into China, top Silicon Valley firms are still showing up in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen — on weekslong learning trips, not to invest. The Information reports that last month Founders Fund partners Sean Liu, John Luttig and Joey Krug visited Chinese tech (Liu’s second trip in a year; Luttig’s first), including MiniMax’s Shanghai HQ and UBTech Robotics in Shenzhen. Focus: portfolio supply-chain dependence and competitor benchmarks across advanced manufacturing, robotics, self-driving, energy and AI. Khosla Ventures partners have made similar trips two years running (Xiaomi this year; Unitree last year). Dimension Capital, Costanoa and Thrive Capital have also been on recent China diligence maps.
Verified vs. caveat. TI sources the visits to people familiar; the firms are not described as closing new China cheques from these trips. PitchBook-cited colour in the same piece: U.S. VCs in 105 China-HQ deals year-to-date vs 110 last year — down ~80% from 533 in 2021 — under Biden-era outbound rules on semis, AI and quantum that carried into early 2025. Treat named itineraries and “not to invest” framing as reporting, not as on-record firm statements.
Why it matters. The irony is the point: public China antipathy (including from Thiel-adjacent circles) sits beside quiet, named diligence of China’s AI and humanoid stack — DeepSeek/Moonshot open-source cost edge, ByteDance Seedance, Unitree + AgiBot share of humanoid shipments, China dominance of key humanoid supply-chain firms. For Dealroom profiles, this updates how Founders Fund and Khosla actually underwrite China risk: watch and learn, don’t write.
The signal: Outbound capital rules killed the cheque volume; they did not kill the need to see the competitor and the supply chain in person. Learning trips without LP-facing China exposure may become the durable U.S. VC posture — benchmark the frontier without owning it.
Read more: The Information
