Chinese AI Rocket Engine Startup LegendSpace Raises $29.5 Million Angel Round

LegendSpace, a six-month-old Chinese startup using artificial intelligence to accelerate rocket engine development, has raised 200 million yuan ($29.5 million) in angel funding, the company announced July 16.

Investors include Vitalbridge, Yuanma Lüdong, Shangshi Capital, Crystal Stream Capital, and Oriental Fortune Capital, with Gaohu Capital acting as financial advisor. The round is notably as large as some early-stage rounds for complete launch vehicle startups.

The company, officially named Linjie Hangtian (Beijing) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., describes itself as an "AI-native" developer and manufacturer of liquid rocket engines. Its centerpiece is the "Prime" agent-based engine development platform, launched in March with the Beijing Institute for AI for Science (AISI) at the Zhongguancun Forum.

From Cambridge to Commercial Space

Founder Chen Zhi, born in 1991, is an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at Peking University and academic vice dean of AISI. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where he later served as a researcher and PhD supervisor. Chen received the Combustion Institute's Bernard Lewis Fellowship in 2020 — the first Chinese recipient of the award.

His background includes work on combustion instability at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries gas turbines and visiting research stints at Sandia National Laboratories and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). His team developed DeepFlame, an open-source, GPU-native reacting flow simulation platform that won the "CCF HPC China 2025 Best Supercomputing Application" award.

Two-Week Engine Iteration

The Prime platform claims to link AI-driven design generation, multiphysics simulation, additive manufacturing, and hot-fire testing into a closed loop that can compress engine iteration cycles from years to roughly two weeks.

LegendSpace says it has completed one full validation loop — from AI-assisted design through simulation to cold and hot testing. A 2.5-ton-thrust liquid engine is currently in 3D-printed trial production. The company has not disclosed the engine's propellant combination or cycle, nor named prospective customers.

Crowded Field

LegendSpace enters a competitive market. China already hosts dedicated commercial engine makers like Jiuzhou Yunjian alongside vertically integrated launch startups such as Landspace, Space Pioneer, and iSpace, all of which develop propulsion in-house.

Success will likely depend on proving that AI-driven development can deliver demonstrably faster and cheaper engines at relevant thrust levels. The size of the angel round — unusually large for a six-month-old engine startup — suggests investors are betting on that proposition.

Source: https://spacenews.com/ai-rocket-engine-startup-legendspace-raises-29-5-million-angel-round/