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Key Takeaways
Lab profileActive frontier lab

StepFun (阶跃星辰)

Multimodal-to-Device CrewTotem · Ascending steps

Known for: MSRA-heavy Shanghai lab; multimodal models and heavy training infrastructure, increasingly oriented toward on-device and edge deployment.

Shanghai foundation-model lab founded by ex-MSRA Chief Scientist Jiang Daxin (姜大昕). Densest MSRA-diaspora cluster. Yin Qi (印奇, Megvii co-founder) became chairman January 2026.

Founded
2023
Location
Shanghai
WebsiteGitHub
Step-1VStep-2 (1T MoE)Step-Video-T2VStep-AudioStep-3 (321B MoE)
Revenue
~RMB500M (~$69M)
As of 2026-04-15
via CMBI citing Caijing
ARR
~RMB1.2B 2026E (~$165M)
Reported revenue plus 2026 forecast
via CMBI citing Caijing
Valuation
$10B
$10B reported IPO target valuation
Funding raised
$3.2B
>$3.2B cumulative disclosed/announced funding, plus earlier undisclosed rounds
Key people
Investors
Tencent (腾讯)Qiming Venture Partners (启明创投)5Y Capital (五源资本)Pudong Venture Capital (浦东创投)Shanghai SSCIC / Shanghai Guotou (Fortera) (上海国投 / 上海国际集团)China Life Private Equity (国寿资本)
Government backing
Shanghai SASAC / Municipal Gov (上海市国资委)Pudong New Area (浦东新区)

Models & API pricing

Rates are OpenRouter's listed prices (USD per 1M tokens), a convenient cross-provider benchmark. First-party / native API pricing in China can differ, sometimes materially. Source: OpenRouter, as of May 29, 2026. Compare them on the models page.

Step 3.5 Flash
262K context
$0.09
Input / 1M
$0.3
Output / 1M

News & coverage

Notable recent updates, newest first.

ISR 1 hour
DealJun 8, 2026
StepFun

StepFun (Chinese: 阶跃星辰) may file for a Hong Kong IPO Monday at a $12B valuation, after a $2.5B funding round.

StepFun (Chinese: 阶跃星辰) reportedly to launch Hong Kong IPO on Monday, valuation exceeding $12 billion
Zhidongxi (智东西)
ProductJun 1, 2026
StepFun

StepFun (Chinese: 阶跃星辰) claims its Flash model achieves task costs only 1/9 of Claude Opus 4.6.

Task cost is only 1/9 of Claude Opus 4.6, StepFun (Chinese: 阶跃星辰) refreshes Flash model efficiency
iFanr (爱范儿)
FundingMay 24, 2026
StepFun

StepFun raised over 30 billion yuan in May 2026 for R&D, computing power, and talent.

36Kr (36氪)