Five Sources Capital Promotes Its First Post-90s Partner

"How Do a VC's New Capabilities Grow?" By Zhiyan Chen

It was late one night in 2022. On a flight from Shenzhen to Shanghai, the cabin lights had gone dark, leaving only the red emergency exit signs glowing starkly in the blackness.

Xutian Jing, a managing director at 5Y Capital, sat next to one of his portfolio founders — Shuhao Wen of XtalPi — in the emergency exit row. They weren't talking about the tightening industry reality. Since Wen had done his postdoc in physics at MIT, Jing asked him a physics question: Is the world predetermined?

"If everything is made of microscopic particles, and we know their trajectories, can we predict everything?" Jing added.

"The direction of an event is highly correlated with the 'observation and belief' of the observer closest to it," Wen replied. "The degree to which these people believe has a decisive effect on how things turn out."

At that moment, the primary market for biotech was in the doldrums. Bad news dominated everything. Jing, who was responsible for building out 5Y Capital's ITBT (Information Technology + Biotechnology) practice, had made a flurry of investments, only to watch the market plummet from a series of valuation peaks. Struggling with doubts about both the sector and himself, Jing was struck by Wen's answer.

"I thought to myself then: if even I don't believe in this industry and these companies, then hope might really be gone."

Two years later, on June 13, 2024, XtalPi listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the first company to go public under the Chapter 18C specialist technology listing regime.

After that, 5Y's biotech portfolio collectively took off. To date, beyond the several companies already listed, more than five bio/medical portfolio companies have formally filed for IPO. And in just the past 12 months, 5Y's biotech portfolio companies have announced seven major overseas BD deals (including six international pharma deals and one overseas NewCo deal), with total transaction value exceeding 100 billion RMB.

From early "lone wolf" operations to now a professional team including multiple PhDs, biotech has become a major investment pillar for 5Y Capital, alongside AI and hard tech.

In September 2025, 5Y Capital promoted Jing to partner. Internally, this was seen as the final confirmation of a young investor's complete evolution — from stumbling into the industry, to bold experimentation, to cognitive reconstruction.

Jing's nine years at 5Y spanned a full sector cycle, passing China's market stress test: from the obscurity of the ITBT concept's germination in 2018, to the noise and "early success" of capital mania in 2020, to the self-doubt when the bubble burst in 2022–2023, and finally to the conviction of platform value realization today.

This 1991-born investor may also be the first "post-90s" partner among China's top-tier generalist firms to have fully walked through this entire growth arc.

This is not merely a workplace story about how a young "post-90s" person rose to the top at a frontline firm. It is also a case study of how a leading VC grows new capabilities and captures new opportunities through "organizational evolution."

Below is the conversation between An Yong Waves and Xutian Jing —

Part 01

Experimenting with "New Things"

An Yong: You joined 5Y (then still Morningside) in 2017. At that time, there was no clear mandate to invest in ITBT. As an "atypical" candidate with a biology background and consulting experience, why do you think you were hired?

Xutian Jing: There wasn't much discussion about "why you" at the time. What attracted me most about investing was that it required you to exercise intuition and imagination, rather than being a cog in a predetermined framework.

What stuck with me most was Richard (note: 5Y Capital founding partner Qin Liu) asking me: "What's the craziest thing you've ever done?" Honestly, I'm a pretty well-behaved person. I hadn't done anything crazy. I thought I gave a terrible answer.

But later I understood the core behind that question: 5Y wasn't looking for rule-following finance veterans. They wanted to recruit young, fearless people who didn't know the so-called "industry conventions" — people who could slip through the cracks of big companies or traditional industries and build something new together.

An Yong: Was "new stuff" important to 5Y at that time?

Xutian Jing: We were actually trying to challenge a very fundamental question: whether 5Y's methodology had "generalization capability." If 5Y's investments could break through in a completely unfamiliar domain, it would prove that the firm's methodology and investment capabilities truly possessed cross-paradigm generalizability.

An Yong: Why did ITBT become that "new thing"?

Xutian Jing: In the ITBT direction, we started entirely from first principles of science. In 2017 and 2018, AI already had some applications, and I was thinking: drug discovery — especially small molecule binding to targets — is fundamentally a pattern recognition problem, very suitable for AI. With this idea, I went to Boston and talked to many people working at the intersection of disciplines. I found that people were indeed doing it.

It was still early, but we saw the business model possibility: not only discovering drugs that the human brain couldn't find, but also making biotech a scale-up business. So we started placing bets.

An Yong: Carving out a domain within a firm necessarily involves "trial and error." As a newly joined investment manager, what was your allowed "trial and error" budget?

Xutian Jing: We don't have an absolute "trial and error capital allocation." Because true trial and error requires you to continuously propose hypotheses, validate them, possibly overturn them, and constantly formulate new hypotheses to seek further validation — a process full of uncertainty. At the same time, trial and error isn't just about risk mitigation. More importantly, it gives you the confidence to make high-quality judgments and place heavy bets even when facing massive uncertainty.

An Yong: Give a concrete example.

Xutian Jing: What I remember most deeply is adding to our position in XtalPi. During the Series C and D rounds, there was actually enormous decision pressure. That was around 2020. The market was heating up, valuations were high, but honestly, commercial validation was still very preliminary. No one could pound their chest and say this would definitely work.

The judgment at the time was: although uncertainty was high, the technology platform had established a certain closed-loop feedback, downstream scalable application scenarios were very broad, and the founding team's conviction was extremely strong. This actually returned to our most fundamental investment logic: since we saw signals of head effects and technology evolution, we should place heavy bets at critical moments.

An Yong: I know 5Y has an internal value called "extreme" or "ultimate." In the process of trial and error, how does this extremeness manifest? Is it just doing thorough due diligence?

Xutian Jing: Not entirely. There was a project that ultimately lost money. In the post-mortem, I said: "Even if we hadn't made that investment, or had anticipated all the risks we now know, going back to that point in time with the information then, we probably still would have invested." But Richard's follow-up was particularly enlightening to me.

He said: "You're right. But for us as investors, losing money on a high-quality decision versus losing money on a sloppy decision are completely different things."

If an investor does their work to the extreme, validates all the logic that should be validated, and still loses due to market/technology underperformance or uncontrollable factors, they can still learn from it. And this habit of extremeness will let you win it back on the next project. But if you act sloppily, even if you make money, it's luck — not replicable.

Part 02

From the Peak into the Ice Cave

An Yong: 2020 to 2021 was something of an ITBT bubble period. What was your state of mind then?

Xutian Jing: I was really getting a bit full of myself. There was so much money in the market. TMT funds were also getting into pharma, especially AI drug discovery. The projects we invested in — you'd invest today, and tomorrow there'd be a next round with doubled valuation.

The biggest mistake I made then: I mistook capital market heat and fundraising smoothness for actual industry and company progress.

I thought raising money meant the hypotheses I'd proposed were validated. They absolutely were not.

An Yong: What were the consequences of this misjudgment?

Xutian Jing: A very typical industry example at the time was that investors, to get into a star company, would pay very high premiums. Some founding teams had extremely strong academic backgrounds and published great papers. All institutions would swarm in. Tech investing easily falls into this trap. In that feverish sentiment, we often overlooked that for tech companies, if a team lacks experienced project leaders, lacks true industry "veterans" who understand the business, the path to commercialization is very fragile.

An Yong: In retrospect, which parts were bubble and which were real signals?

Xutian Jing: Those years were indeed very hot. Round after round of financing completed, valuations rose. But looking back now, this was more "beta" on the capital side. Even on the business side, many companies claimed partnerships with domestic and international pharma companies at the time. But breaking it down, many were small exploratory collaborations. Pharma companies were in a "testing the waters" mindset before truly committing — not hard indicators of fully mature technology.

And in the years after the bubble deflated and the market cooled, some real signals crystallized out. Some of our companies gradually built moats in their respective domains.

For example, XtalPi — before industry consensus formed — stubbornly pursued a "wet-dry integration" closed loop, using AI combined with automated robotics to truly build a high-quality data feedback system that could iterate rapidly. Another example is MetaXen Peptide, which built a globally scarce macrocyclic peptide design moat in the then extremely niche field of non-natural peptides. And Jixing Medicine, which used AI combined with proprietary experimental platforms to create delivery tools surpassing industry best-in-class levels on drug delivery, a major industry pain point. Plus Helixon Therapeutics, which not only built very solid underlying technology platforms but also used them to initiate very high-quality pipelines. These are the signals we as investors should truly focus on.

An Yong: That fever cooled very quickly. In 2022 and 2023, the market can really only be described as "plunging straight down."

Xutian Jing: Right. Like a roller coaster, straight from the peak into an ice cave.

From the second half of 2021, Chinese concept stocks crashed, the tutoring industry went to zero, and then the pharma sector was beaten down to 20%, 30% in the secondary market. The primary market nearly froze. Those companies we had once been proud of suddenly couldn't raise money.

The internal pressure was enormous then. Although the bosses were relatively tactful and wouldn't directly criticize me, I knew very well in my heart. Every meeting, my report card was right there: returns declining, projects unable to raise financing, bad news coming one after another.

For about two to three years, it was extremely painful. I felt like I was sitting on the "cold bench."

An Yong: Perhaps this is the "magic" of investing. Did you doubt that you'd chosen the wrong profession?

Xutian Jing: There were many fleeting moments. Really.

Watching other sectors still making money, or other colleagues still actively deploying, while my side was all negative news. Every week founders would come to me with bad news too: running out of money, co-founder conflicts, technical bottlenecks.

Back then I even wondered: am I not suited for investing? Do I just not have the talent?

An Yong: How did you process these emotions?

Xutian Jing: I was very anxious then. I couldn't find a winning feeling at work, feeling abandoned by the world. At a 5Y team-building event at the end of 2023, there was a small go-kart race, and I became very intense. My arm was bruised and I completely didn't feel the pain. It wasn't until the race ended, seeing blood all over my hands, that I realized.

Looking back now, that was actually a stress response while in the trough. I didn't just want to win — I wanted to prove to everyone, to prove to myself: I still have fight in me, I can still come back.

An Yong: Many sector investors went through similar pain in 2022 and 2023. Many of them also left the primary market. Why didn't you?

Xutian Jing: It still comes down to one word: belief.

Belief in two things. First, belief in this industry. I believe ITBT isn't just about making drugs — it's something that can change the production function of the pharmaceutical industry. Second, belief in those founders.

Although every time they came to me, half the time was bad news, in the other half, when they talked about technical progress, about new AI model discoveries and applications, the light in their eyes wouldn't go out.

An Yong: Were there moments that particularly moved you?

Xutian Jing: I remember one time, Shuhao Wen (co-founder of XtalPi) and I were on a late-night flight. The cabin lights were all off. Only the safety exit indicator lights and the dim overhead reading lights were on, like stars.

I asked him: From a physics perspective, is the world predetermined? If we know the state of all particles, can the future be calculated?

He told me about a quantum mechanics perspective: The direction of something is actually highly correlated with the observer's belief. The people closest to it (for a company, perhaps the founder, the investor, the employees) — their degree of belief has a decisive effect on the outcome.

Then, in the pitch darkness, looking at those star-like lights, I was suddenly struck. If even I, the earliest backer, the person closest to it, didn't believe, then this ship might really sink.

That moment, you could say, I completed a kind of psychological reconstruction.

An Yong: Many institutions chose to "lie flat" during that period. At the organizational level, what did 5Y do?

Xutian Jing: Although we faced enormous psychological pressure, in terms of business actions, we actually didn't stop. We explored even more actively. Companies like MetaXen Peptide, Helixon Therapeutics, and Zean Bio were all investment decisions made during the period before the market recovered. And each of these companies completed at least one BD deal with total value in the billions of dollars this year.

Even though the investment industry is easily affected by macro market conditions, 5Y has always had some "non-consensus" DNA that doesn't follow the crowd. We base investment decisions more on fundamental bottom-up thinking.

Of course, another more important point: just as with AI, negative samples and negative feedback are equally precious training data. Winning individual battles and cities matters, but building stronger investment capability is the core.

Part 03

Confirmation of the Closed Loop

An Yong: What stage is biotech investing at now?

Xutian Jing: Looking back, the first stage was when we saw the possibility of new technology and business models and started experimenting. The second stage was when our investment perspective was recognized by the market and experienced a brief bubble. The third stage was the adjustment period of the past few years we just discussed. Now we're at the fourth stage: some companies have gradually begun substantive realization, while we use updated cognition to start laying out a new batch of companies. We're still looking for platforms that can continuously output high-quality assets on the R&D side — whether new capabilities brought by AI, or reusable, scarce engineering capabilities embedded in novel biotechnologies.

An Yong: Has 5Y's approach changed?

Xutian Jing: Our previous blind spot was: we understood tech, but we didn't understand bio. So we often had a hammer looking for nails. Now we've filled that gap, recruiting a professional PhD investment team and establishing professional drug asset evaluation mechanisms.

Of course, the companies in our portfolio that survived are also beginning to demonstrate true "platform capabilities." Companies like XtalPi, Helixon Therapeutics, MetaXen Peptide, and Zean Bio all have good commercialization progress, and they have somewhat different characteristics from traditional biotech. They've broken away from the traditional "one-shot deal" model of raise money, burn money, build pipeline, then sell to big pharma or IPO. Many of our platform biotech companies haven't spent much of their own money before big pharma comes knocking. This model can greatly improve capital efficiency and R&D capacity.

An Yong: What does this mean?

Xutian Jing: It means these startups don't need to bear the high risk of pipeline failure too much in isolation. Instead, through platform technology, they can partner with world-class companies for R&D, obtaining ample cash flow while greatly increasing internal and external pipeline numbers, thereby making the platform stronger. This is the ITBT business model we envisioned from the beginning — high leverage, scalable.

An Yong: How was 5Y's biotech team built?

Xutian Jing: We started exploring in 2017, and internally proposed the ITBT concept in 2018, with the goal of finding capabilities that could scale drug asset production. Until 2020, we mainly maintained a lean "lone wolf model."

As our understanding of the portfolio deepened, we realized that beyond the technology platform itself, high-quality project initiation capability was even more critical to success. To fill this judgment gap, we brought in our first professional pharma PhD in 2021. To date, 5Y has a five-person full-time biotech team including three PhDs, allowing us to dialogue with scientists at the ground truth level with stronger asset judgment capability.

An Yong: Compared to traditional vertical biotech funds, what is fundamentally different about your investment and judgment in biotech?

Xutian Jing: The biggest difference may be our obsession with "non-consensus" and "paradigm shift," migrating 5Y's consistent methodology experience across industries into the pharma domain.

We don't chase short-term trends. We're accustomed to predicting long-term paradigm shifts at the "non-consensus" stage. For example, the companies I mentioned earlier were not hot market directions when we bet on them. On the asset side, traditional perspectives may focus more on single-pipeline clinical data, but we care more about whether a company possesses "platform-level" long-term competitiveness.

Another dimension is people. We respect "halos" but don't worship them. We're also willing to bet on young people or even "outsiders." If you want to find "paradigm shifts," this person must first be a "change-maker."

An Yong: "Post-90s" partners are extremely rare to see at top-tier large institutions in the market. What does this mean to you?

Xutian Jing: The promotion itself isn't important. What's more meaningful to me is walking through a confirmation of the closed loop.

From proposing a direction that sounded extremely unreliable, to early experimentation, to positive feedback, through a bubble, into the abyss, and finally climbing back up to see companies really produce something and generate returns for the fund. Going through this complete cycle matters far more than title itself. It brings my self-cognition somewhat closer to objectivity and better equips me to do investment going forward. It also further validates that 5Y's methodology is effective and replicable in exploring sectors and cultivating young people.

An Yong: What's the biggest change in yourself over nine years as an investor?

Xutian Jing: Being able to set aside emotion and view myself objectively from a higher dimension.

There's a term called "external scorecard." When I was young, I cared deeply about this. In 2021, when everyone said you were "young and accomplished," I got full of myself. In 2022, when everyone thought your sector was dead, I felt worthless.

Now, even if I hit another trough, I hope I can face it calmly. As long as I'm convinced I'm doing the right thing, I'll persist. There are really only one or two important things in life. Just do them well.

An Yong: Actually, the VC industry today is far less glamorous than it was five or ten years ago. If a young person stood before you wanting to join this industry, what would you say?

Xutian Jing: The influence of time is secondary. Any industry will rise and fall with cycles. The so-called "glamour" is often an external misunderstanding. Because in my view, VC is more like entrepreneurship than finance. It's the place in finance closest to "people" and "uncertainty." So if you want to join, you need to abandon the illusion of being the "buyer," bring an entrepreneur's mindset, and have the resolve to persist in self-growth over long cycles.

Layout | Nan Yao Image source | IC Photo

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