MONOLITH砺思资本｜Riding with Great Tech Companies
Think to know, and temper through action.
Monolith was founded in 2021 by Xi Cao, formerly a partner at HSG, and Tim Wang, formerly a partner in the public markets team at Boyu Capital. The firm invests across both primary and secondary markets, with a focus on next-generation digital industries and tech-enabled manufacturing. It currently manages nearly RMB 6 billion in assets.
01.
About the Firm
Monolith is a research-driven, value-driven investor. Across different market cycles, we apply first-principles thinking and a consistent strategy — identifying themes top-down and conducting rigorous bottom-up research to find assets with long-term value.
We seek out, discover, and back the most exceptional founders, providing venture capital from the earliest stages through growth — seed to Series A, with check sizes ranging from RMB 15 million to RMB 100 million; Series B and growth-stage projects are also within our scope.
Our investment focus centers on technology-driven commercial innovation. Through a research-driven, thematic approach, we target revolutionary opportunities in entrepreneurship, with next-generation digital industries and tech-enabled manufacturing as our core themes.
Monolith has assembled an investment team with entrepreneurial and incubation experience across STEM disciplines. This enables us to develop sufficiently deep, granular understanding of underlying technologies — allowing us to anticipate and capture potential commercial opportunities earlier. Team members largely come from senior executive roles at leading domestic and international tech companies, and hold PhDs from top global institutions including MIT and UC Berkeley.
Our decision-making is fast and concentrated, so we can act quickly when disruptive innovation emerges. Research and deliberation, however, are open to all members participating in investment committee discussions, maximizing platform synergy and cross-pollination between primary and secondary market perspectives. In this process, Monolith's public markets research lens provides distinct informational and cognitive inputs for our VC investing.
Our Chinese name, 砺思 (Lì Sī), combines phonetic transliteration with literal meaning — thinking to know, honing to act; reflecting and refining, unifying knowledge and practice. We believe that resilient intellect yields tangible results. Monolith takes its name from the monolith in the classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey, expressing the team's curiosity, exploration, and pursuit of ultimate truths and wisdom in the universe.
As a next-generation fund, Monolith hopes to work alongside founders — dreaming boldly and working diligently — to build our shared future. We welcome all potential partners to reach out.
02.
Partners
Xi Cao is a former partner at HSG with over a decade of industry experience. He previously worked at Tencent and Tongchuang Weiyue, joined HSG in 2013 as its youngest and fastest-rising partner from investment manager, and in 2018 helped establish HSG's seed fund. He has extensive early- and growth-stage investment experience, with portfolio companies including Kuaishou, Douyu, Supermonkey, Tencent Music, Bota Biosciences, METiS Pharmaceuticals, MetaX, Taichi Graphics, and Houmo Intelligence.
Tim Wang is a former partner at Boyu Capital with extensive experience in public market investing across technology and consumer sectors, excellent global perspective, and a strong track record in identifying value opportunities. He joined Boyu Capital in 2014 and helped establish its public markets team, rising from analyst to partner based on outstanding performance. He was previously an equity analyst at Goldman Sachs.
03.
Research Fellow
Monolith has invited and assembled an external advisory network of university professors, industry executives, and founders. They provide deep research, market insights, and founder sourcing in areas of interest to Monolith — horizontally expanding the investment team's cognitive breadth and vertically strengthening our sourcing infrastructure. We welcome inquiries about joining the Monolith Research Fellow program.
04.
Brand & Portfolio Support
Monolith has built out a comprehensive brand and portfolio support system. We have rolled out initiatives including the Monolith Podcast, Monolith Dinners, and Monolith Industry Interviews, covering corporate brand building, day-to-day operations, business development, and financing and M&A — providing support to help portfolio companies coordinate industry resources.
Whether you are a scientist, founder, researcher, or industry practitioner; whether you come from academia or industry, want to start a company or join one, or are interested in joining a Monolith portfolio company — we welcome you to get in touch.
05.
Selected Portfolio (Recent)
METiS Pharmaceuticals
METiS is a biotechnology company that aims to address unmet clinical needs and drive best-in-class therapeutics across a broad range of diseases by integrating drug delivery and drug discovery with AI, machine learning, and quantum simulation.
Graviti (Wanyou Yinli)
Graviti (Ningbo) Electronic Technology Co. is an early-stage company focused on XR (AR/VR/MR). Built on core chip technology, with hardware capabilities and algorithms as foundation, it provides complete technical solutions for next-generation XR user experiences.
Lizhao Technology
Shanghai Lizhao Technology's team comes from the world's top universities and cutting-edge labs, with over ten years of semiconductor industry experience. The company possesses scarce domestic semiconductor equipment expertise and provides advanced, frontier equipment and technical services.
Moonshot AI
Moonshot AI is an AI large model startup with AGI as its core mission, dedicated to maximizing AI's value. Founder Zhilin Yang holds a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied under Ruslan Salakhutdinov — currently Apple's Head of AI and one of the founding figures of deep learning.
MiAO
MiAO is a gaming and social platform founded in 2020 by former Giant Network CEO Wu Meng. Its first global product, currently in development, is a multiplayer open-world voxel game. MiAO will offer first-party content centered on multiplayer gameplay, aiming to deliver immersive gaming experiences and services. With sufficient user scale, it will gradually build a platform ecosystem where players and creators coexist.
Sonosilicon
Sonosilicon is co-owned by multiple Chinese and international PhDs, along with Delft University of Technology and its professors. Headquartered in Hangzhou with a branch in Delft, Netherlands, the company focuses on medical-grade miniature on-chip ultrasound systems and chip design, advancing next-generation intelligent medical imaging devices and instruments.
Yuaiweiwu
Beijing Yuaiweiwu Technology Co. was founded by Huaiting Zhang, former co-founder of TAL's GenShuiXue. Responding to national policy calls for integrating science and education to cultivate talent collaboratively, the company promotes deep integration of AI and education. Built on AIGC (generative AI) and vertically focused on education, it is developing an always-available, all-knowing, full-time AI teacher — using model technology to dramatically reduce learning costs, giving everyone an affordable, personalized, always-on expert tutor who truly understands them.
Infinigence AI
Infinigence AI addresses the challenges facing China's advanced large model algorithms and compute chips — high deployment costs in domain applications, difficult domestic chip substitution, and large model-compute gaps — by building a large model software-hardware co-optimization platform. Its products include efficient domain-specific large model deployment toolchains and integrated large model hardware solutions, supporting the ecosystem development and rapid growth of China's next-generation AI industry.
06.
Recent Honors
ChinaVenture
- Top 10 Emerging VC Firms in China
- Top 10 Best Investment Cases in Biomedicine
- Top 10 Best Emerging Investors in China
36Kr
- Top 10 Most Growth-Potential VC Firms
- Top 100 Most Founder-Friendly Investors
Zero2IPO
- F40 Young Chinese Investors
Forbes
- China Top 100 Venture Capitalists
FORWEEKLY
- Top 20 Innovation-Driven Institutions
- Top 30 GP Youth Leaders
FirstNewVoice (第一新声)
- Top 20 GP Fundraising Comprehensive Ranking
- Top 30 Most Active Early-Stage Investors
- Top 20 Most Active Enterprise Service Investors
LP Club
- Top 10 Hard Tech Investors
- Top 10 Domestic Value-Enabling Investors
- Top 10 Emerging Investment Youth Leaders
China Venture Capital Research Institute
- Top 40 Best Direct Investment Fund Youth Investors
