The archive · Hardware & Devices · Product decision · 2026
Silicon Token bets 20,000-yuan desktop AI can undercut Seedance's cloud: ¥2B valuation
Founded Jan 2026, it bets a ¥20,000 desktop box with consumer GPUs can run full-weight video models locally; two rounds in six months, ¥2B valuation.
Silicon Token（硅基词元）
What the business is
Silicon Token builds desktop 'AI Station' hardware and an on-device inference platform that runs full-weight AI video-generation models on consumer-grade GPUs, aimed at creators who currently pay per-second cloud fees.
Starting capital：Seed from 真知创投 (Zhenzhi Venture Capital, rendered 'Zhen Fund' in 36Kr's English edition); two completed rounds within six months of founding and a third in progress; valuation approaching ¥2B (~$280M)
How it started
Bai Peng, a former Xiaomi senior executive who ran TV, internet, commercial and enterprise businesses reporting to Lei Jun, registered Silicon Token near Tsinghua University's east gate in early 2026. He spent three months researching and concluded cloud video-generation token costs were the pain point; Zhenzhi Venture Capital provided seed incubation, and the company hired 21 engineers, many from Tsinghua's high-performance computing lab.
What happened
Within six months the startup completed two funding rounds with a third in progress, reaching a valuation approaching ¥2B, and filed six invention patents around its inference engine, which streams 120GB of video-model weights through 16GB of consumer VRAM using predictive prefetch scheduling. 36Kr profiled the company on 2026-08-24 as a hardware-led attack on cloud video-generation economics.
No ending yet — it is still running.
Background
Silicon Token (硅基词元) is a Beijing on-device AI startup registered in early 2026 near Tsinghua University's east gate. Its first product is a ¥20,000 desktop 'AI Station' that uses consumer-grade graphics cards to run full-weight AI video-generation models locally — no per-second cloud charges, offline availability, faster response and local storage of materials.
The bet rests on cost math: Seedance's cloud price is ¥1/second for 720P, and with re-generation waste, 100 minutes of finished film costs creators close to ¥20,000 — versus a one-time ¥20,000 device. To make that work, CTO Shen Youren's team rewrote the inference system from scratch, streaming the 120GB weights of a model like MiniMax H3 through 16GB of consumer VRAM with predictive prefetching, so VRAM capacity no longer decides what model a machine can run.
Founder Bai Peng, a former Xiaomi senior executive who reported to Lei Jun, spent three months on research before founding the company; Zhenzhi Venture Capital provided seed incubation. Within six months Silicon Token completed two funding rounds with a third in progress, reached a valuation approaching ¥2B, and filed six national invention patents. 36Kr profiled the company on 2026-08-24, framing it as a hardware wedge into cloud video-generation economics.
What has to be true
- The case is a clean contrarian bet: take a metered cloud service and attack its unit economics with one-time hardware plus a rewritten system.
- Concrete, verifiable traction: a 36Kr profile in Chinese and English on 2026-08-24, a valuation approaching ¥2B within six months, and two completed rounds with a third in progress.
- It isolates the technical risk clearly: dense video models cannot use the sparse-model tricks that made on-device LLMs work, so the entire inference stack had to be rebuilt.
- The outcome test is sharp: the product had not launched as of September 2026, so the valuation is a bet on a system that has yet to ship.
What can be applied
Sell against a metered cost: when rivals charge per second, a one-time hardware price with a rewritten inference system is a calculable ROI wedge.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-02, Silicon Token has not launched its first product; the desktop AI Station is still in R&D. The company is running its third funding round at a valuation approaching ¥2B, has applied for six invention patents, and plans to open its on-device inference platform to phones, tablets, NAS, robots, cars and home appliances after validating it on its own hardware.
Sources
- 半年融三轮，Seedance的云端生意被它撕开了口子
- Three Rounds of Financing Secured Within Half a Year: Seedance's Cloud Business Breaks New Ground and Opens Up Market Gap
- 硅基词元：端侧AI破局者，以两万硬件撬动视频生成新蓝海
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