The Big Three of AI 3D Raise Over 8 Billion Yuan in Half a Year; Meshy's ARR Tops $100 Million

A founder of a leading AI 3D company once explained to us the impact of AI 3D this way:

AI 3D has transformed the entire production relations; you can think of it as a phone camera, or an input method—its core significance is to let the general public participate in content creation.

Now, his words are being proven more and more true.

Leading AI 3D companies are not only racing each other at the model layer, but also continuously optimizing the experience at the product usage level: from AI 3D editing features to Agent capabilities, products are constantly extending toward a complete creative workflow.

On October 16, leading AI 3D company Meshy released Meshy Edit. Meshy says this is an entirely new way to edit 3D models, capable of adding, removing, or replacing local parts of a model without opening Blender.

Meshy Edit

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On October 20, another 3D company, VAST, released and open-sourced the world model EdenLive, pushing its previously released model Project Eden from the "state" level to the "rendering" level. EdenLive only needs reference-provided structure and motion, and the image can be generated in real time and continuously updated.

EdenLive

Behind the frequent "new releases," the AI 3D industry has become a new money-making machine. As of the end of September, Meshy's ARR had surpassed $100 million—and this is just the tip of the iceberg of AI 3D's money-making potential.

Beyond Meshy and VAST, there is also Yingmou (Deemos), which entered AI 3D earlier. These three companies, founded by post-90s entrepreneurs, are becoming darlings of the capital market, raising over 8 billion RMB from the market in half a year.

How exactly will AI 3D disrupt the future content industry?

01 AI 3D startups compete on application scenarios

Compared with text-to-image, AI 3D must not only generate visual appearance but also handle 3D geometric structure, textures, and topology. If the goal is to obtain a model that can continue to be edited, rigged, and enter the production pipeline, post-generation repair and optimization also add cost.

So, can a 3D model obtained from a single generation be edited, reused, and rendered to achieve longer-term economics and reduce the cost of generating and modifying 3D assets?

This is exactly what VAST, Meshy, and Yingmou have all been doing over the past year or so.

In September, VAST officially released the Tripo P2.0 (P2.0) model. P2.0 introduced smart UV mapping, improved textures, and restructured rigging and animation tools, capable of generating native quad meshes with face counts between 500 and 25,000. At the same time, Tripo quietly wrote a line in its official documentation:

The mesh editing feature allows you to refine specific areas without regenerating the entire model. Pro, Max, and Team users only need to spend 100 credits to generate up to four versions with different face counts in a single run.

More than a month later, Meshy went further by launching Meshy Edit, an entirely new way for Meshy to edit 3D models, in which the "local editing" feature only changes the part you select and keeps the rest of the model unchanged.

Meshy gives a direct example in its official documentation:

You generated a model, and the result is almost right. The pose is right, the proportions are right, but one part is wrong: there's an extra piece, a missing accessory, or a weapon you want to replace.

Now you have only two choices: regenerate the entire model and pray that everything else stays consistent; or export to Blender and fix it manually.

Meshy Edit gives you a third choice: click Edit on the model to enter Edit Mode.ㅤ

Details that might have taken hours to modify manually in Blender in the past—Meshy Edit aims to help users complete in minutes.

Behind this is a shift in AI 3D product thinking: model generation is no longer the end point of creation, but a starting point that can be adjusted repeatedly.

In June this year, when Meshy released its Agent, it made a similar statement:

Meshy 3D Agent is an AI 3D model generator you can talk to.

Without using Blender or Maya, users can complete more 3D creation tasks through conversation. Built for 3D printing manufacturers, indie game developers, 3D artists, and designers.

Meshy is not the first company to add editing features to 3D modeling. As early as the beginning of this year, Yingmou Technology announced the Rodin Gen-2 Edit (text/image-to-3D) model, billed as the industry's first commercial product to integrate "3D generation" and "3D editing" into a complete workflow.

Rodin Gen-2 Edit supports generating 3D content directly on the platform and using prompts to make local modifications to the results; it can also import any existing model (including third-party AI-generated models or legacy assets) and edit based on the original model.

The founder of Yingmou once said in an interview that there is a huge gap between what is developed in the lab and what can actually be used. To close this gap, the key is that generated models must meet usage standards and that users can control the 3D generation results.ㅤ

On September 22, Yingmou Hyper3D officially launched Agentic Mode, integrating Hyper3D Rodin with LLM multimodal context analysis capabilities into a single creative workflow: it first understands and automatically processes user-submitted materials such as images and dimension drawings as needed, independently determines the most suitable 3D modeling approach, and keeps the editing and processing of generated results within the same workflow.

Behind the moves by VAST, Meshy, and Yingmou to build out 3D editing features is the need to address the inevitable revision process in 3D generation. And when creators can accomplish their goals through a platform, the platform not only gains users' continued engagement but may even become their long-term entry point for work.

02 AI 3D: Rapid Growth, Lightning-Fast "Money Magnet"

Behind AI 3D coming into the view of more creators, a new "money-magnet" industry is taking shape.

On one hand, AI 3D is attracting more and more capital. Within half a year, VAST, Meshy, and Yingmou attracted over 8 billion yuan.

In September 2026, VAST announced the completion of Series B and B+ financing, totaling 3 billion yuan. Previously, from March to July, VAST conducted multiple financing rounds ranging from $50 million to $200 million. Roughly speaking, VAST completed over 5 billion yuan in financing within half a year.

Behind VAST stands a young founder from the SenseTime circle: Song Yachen.

VAST founder Song Yachen

Song Yachen was born in 1997 and holds dual bachelor's degrees in international relations and economics from Johns Hopkins University in the United States. In 2019, Song Yachen joined SenseTime and began working with AIGC 3D-related technologies.

In 2023, Song Yachen founded VAST, and from 2023 to 2025 it gradually grew at a pace of one financing round per year. In 2026, VAST completed cumulative financing of over 5 billion yuan, with its valuation reaching $2 billion.

Beyond VAST, Meshy also completed an unprecedented $400 million financing round in July 2026. It was jointly invested by IDG Capital, Matrix Partners China, and Monolith Management, with existing shareholders including Granite Asia, Sequoia China, BAI Capital, and Source Code Capital following on; the post-investment valuation was $1.5 billion, over 10 billion yuan.

Meshy founder Hu Yuanming was born in 1994, and his early career could be described as smooth sailing: admitted to Tsinghua's Yao Class without examination, he earned a PhD from MIT in three years under Frédo Durand, a leading figure in graphics.

Meshy founder Hu Yuanming

In 2021, Hu Yuanming returned to China to start a business and founded Taichi Graphics. With the halo of Yao Class and an MIT PhD, Sequoia China invested in the angel round. But Hu Yuanming's early venture did not go smoothly; at one point, due to an unclear positioning, it headed toward a dead end by going head-to-head with established local software, until the flash of inspiration that became Meshy.

What Meshy set out to build was an AI tool that generates 3D models from text and images. Meshy's initial version was also not smooth: the models were not detailed enough and the renders looked bizarre—internally it was called "four faces"—and the first developer to use it was making a horror game.

And just like that, Meshy completed its cold start.

Since its founding, Meshy has completed only three financing rounds; apart from the latest $400 million, the previous round was a $36 million Series A completed in 2024.

Earlier to enter the field than Meshy and VAST was Yingmou Technology; its founder Wu Di was born in 1997 and was among ShanghaiTech University's second cohort of undergraduates. Yingmou Technology was founded in 2020 as a startup incubated by the university.ㅤ

Wu Di speaking at the ShanghaiTech University 10th Anniversary Conference on Science-Education Integration and Innovation-Driven Development. Image source: ShanghaiTech University official website

In 2022, Yingmou Technology received tens of millions of yuan in investment from Sequoia China and MiraclePlus. In 2025, Yingmou Technology successively completed Series A and A+ financing; in addition to investment institutions such as Sequoia China, internet giants Meituan and ByteDance also appeared on the list of investors. In June 2026, Yingmou Technology completed a Series B financing round of several hundred million yuan.

One trend is that since 2025, AI 3D has begun to receive increasing attention. VAST, Meshy, and Yingmou Technology all secured their largest investments since founding within the past year or so.

Behind this, the AI 3D industry is sprinting into the commercialization channel. The Quiet Lion Report's August AIGC site payment rankings show that five AI 3D sites together had an incremental payment intent of over 190,000, ranking second only to AI video in number of entries.

At the end of September 2026, Meshy announced that its ARR (annual recurring revenue) had surpassed $100 million, and the ARR of VAST and Yingmou Technology had also reached tens of millions of dollars.

After reaching the $100 million milestone, Hu Yuanming wrote on his personal WeChat public account (Hu Yuanming Ethan):

We support paying employees the highest market salaries. Besides believing in "being kind to others" and hoping that colleagues working hard alongside us can live a little better, another reason is that our business has relatively high gross margins, which supports us in doing this.ㅤ

03 The "AI 3D Big Three": Different Business Visions, Different Business Paths

VAST founder Song Yachen has mentioned Douyin many times, hoping to build a 3D version of Douyin. He said:

"3D Douyin" is a brand-new content format, more of an ecosystem of "strong interaction + light content," which will allow users to generate and share 3D content.

To realize this vision, the barrier to generating 3D content needs to be low enough. Similarly, CapCut greatly lowered the barrier to video editing and fostered the short-video content ecosystem. Song Yachen once told us:

In the next 3 to 5 years, VAST will keep launching new products, including a "3D CapCut" and a "3D Douyin."

To realize such a long-term vision, VAST has not only built an AI 3D work platform like Tripo Studio, offering models such as Tripo H3.1 and Tripo P1.0/P2.0, but also explored pushing 3D assets toward becoming "the foundation of the next-generation UGC interactive platform and 3D content ecosystem."

On October 20, VAST released the open-source EdenLive, attempting to advance 3D asset generation into real-time, interactive three-dimensional worlds. VAST calls it the real-time generative renderer of the Project Eden series. Project Eden is a world model VAST released in May this year; it supports multi-player concurrency and has native persistence.

In terms of ARR, VAST does not stand out among these three companies, with the figure announced in August 2025 at $12 million. But in its latest funding round, VAST's post-money valuation has reached $2 billion, surpassing Meshy's 10 billion yuan.

According to a report by the STAR Market Daily, VAST's Tripo series models currently have 20 million users. In addition, a March report by 36Kr mentioned that VAST's ecosystem partnerships cover companies such as Tencent, ByteDance, and Bambu Lab as well as more than 90,000 developers, and its Tripo Studio platform has gathered more than 6.5 million creators, who have generated nearly 100 million 3D models in total.

The "fun" here is not the shallow entertainment of scrolling short videos, nor is it killing time—experiencing nearly infinite experiences within a finite life can itself be a kind of meaning.

Meshy founder Hu Yuanming believes that when productivity is greatly liberated, people's core question will shift from "how to work more efficiently" to "how to create, express, connect, and gain a sense of meaning."

Meshy calls the form that takes on this task "real-time interactive multimodal content experiences."

Meshy's revenue model is subscription plus pay-as-you-go: consumer creators subscribe to generation quotas by the month, and B2B game studios and 3D printing customers can also obtain services through API licensing. Its growth engine likewise comes from the two major scenarios of gaming and 3D printing.

According to Meshy's disclosures, it has more than 12 million registered users, and the platform has generated more than 100 million models in total. Meshy is already directly targeting a broader range of creators: a user throws in a single prompt or a 2D image, and Meshy can directly spit out a 3D model that can go into a game engine.

Unlike the visions of VAST and Meshy, Yingmou's goal from the very beginning has been to serve professionals. To this end, Yingmou's core founders personally use 3D software such as Blender, edit videos and do rendering themselves, to experience what difficulties they will encounter in the process.

In the view of the Yingmou team, in the next 3-5 years, 3D generation will mainly be used by professional users. Therefore, Yingmou emphasizes entering enterprise customers and real production workflows with professional-grade 3D generation capabilities. Yingmou Technology CEO Wu Di once said:

3D generation is an underlying capability that gaming, film and television, industrial design, and even the intelligentization of the physical world cannot do without.

We continue to explore scene generation technology, and our research result CAST can already directly benefit fields such as virtual scene experiences, game concept design, and embodied intelligence simulation environment training.

Although VAST, Meshy, and Yingmou have established certain advantages and are highly favored by capital, beyond startups, many big tech giants are also accelerating their layouts:

In April 2026, ByteDance released Seed 3D 2.0, saying it has reached industry-leading levels in both of the two core metrics of geometry generation and texture/material generation.ㅤ

In the same period, Tencent Hunyuan released and open-sourced the Hunyuan 3D World Model 2.0 (HY-World2.0). The model supports multiple input methods such as text, images, and videos, and can generate a complete 3D space containing people, objects, and scenery with one click.

In August, Tencent launched the 3D open-world generation framework WorldClaw; users input a single open-ended text description, and WorldClaw can generate a large-scale 3D world that can be freely explored and further edited.

The giants' joining this AI 3D boom certainly affirms the post-90s entrepreneurs who bet earlier. But it also means they will face greater challenges.

This article is from the WeChat public account "FoST Future Narrative," author: Congcong, published with authorization by 36Kr.