Another VC Rebrands with a New Name

"Twenty years of local iteration." Text by Muxin Xu

Edited by Zhiyan Chen

Just moments ago, investment firm Lightspeed China Partners announced it is officially adopting the brand "Luminous Ventures" (光合创投). Following its 2023 rebrand from "Lightspeed China" to "Lightspeed China Partners" (光速光合), this imported brand — traceable in the China market as far back as 2006 — has finally come of age in its twentieth year.

According to its official statement, this "brand iteration" aims to better put down roots in the Chinese market and "create more value for entrepreneurs and LP investors."

Luminous Ventures' history in China dates back to 2006.

Shortly after Hongshan, GGV Capital and other foreign VC firms entered China, Lightspeed Venture Partners — headquartered in California and known for its B2B investments — also began laying out its China strategy.

Lightspeed's first China lead was investor Darong Cao. In 2008, Jixun Mi, then Greater China chief representative at Google, joined as partner. Around the same time, Yan Han, who had just left McKinsey, started his investment career here as an investment manager.

In 2011, Lightspeed China was formally established. It was among the first dollar funds to raise, invest, and operate through a fully independent entity, with a sharp focus on early-stage investing in China. Then, as China's mobile internet exploded, Mi backed a string of star companies including Meituan-Dianping, Pinduoduo, and Innolight.

In 2016, with the growth of domestic LPs, Lightspeed China raised its first RMB fund, pivoting toward a dual-currency model. Its scale grew year by year, expanding from pure internet platforms into areas with greater industrial depth. By 2019, it had raised $560 million.

By then, the entire VC industry was showing signs of froth, and competition in the primary market was intensifying. In January 2019, in an exclusive interview with An Yong Waves (暗涌Waves), Mi and Han positioned Lightspeed China's differentiation around its "global perspective."

At the time, although Lightspeed China had been operating independently for years, it maintained high-frequency information exchange with Lightspeed US and Lightspeed India under the same brand. After the annual meeting in Shanghai, there would be a global annual meeting in California; back-office functions like portfolio services, HR, and PR were coordinated across regions; and every month, the investment teams from all three offices held conference calls to share sector research, market dynamics, and deal flow.

It would be fair to say that, with China's early-stage investment opportunities repeatedly validated and new-economy business models beginning to show their potential globally, that was the moment when Chinese teams of American VC brands started to demonstrate their strategic importance.

By the end of 2021, amid the collective "arms race" among dollar funds, Lightspeed China — under Mi's leadership — set another fundraising record, closing a new $920 million round and adding five partners at once. Hard tech and new energy became the keywords in its investment direction.

However, as the international landscape shifted, many investment firms' globalization strategies ran into difficulties. In 2023, Lightspeed China was renamed "Lightspeed China Partners" (光速光合), a name whose meaning draws from photosynthesis: absorbing light energy (innovation resources), converting carbon dioxide (societal needs) into organic matter (commercial value), and releasing oxygen (positive societal impact).

It is not hard to see that its investment focus and strategy have shifted again with the changing times. Over the past two years, Lightspeed China Partners has gone deeper and harder into technology and industrial sectors, with representative deals including Unitree, MetaX, X Variable Robotics, Differential Intelligence, and Zhipu AI.

Over nineteen years of local growth, the team has also seen multiple changes. In 2016, Cao left to found Sky9 Capital, aspiring to build a new "VC 3.0" firm. In 2021, Han departed to found Xin Capital, publicly proposing to build a "China dual-currency fund in RMB and non-US dollar."

From the American brand Lightspeed, to the independent Lightspeed China, to Lightspeed China Partners, and now to Luminous Ventures, this firm — headquartered in Shanghai's Xintiandi — has finally completed its coming-of-age ritual in its twentieth year. Shedding its imported name is, one imagines, only the first step in a new beginning.

Image source | Unsplash

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