Monolith Capital, alongside great technology companies
Monolith is an investment management firm co-founded in 2021 by Xi Cao, formerly a partner at Sequoia China, and Tim Wang, formerly a partner in the public markets team at Boyu Capital. Monolith covers both private and public markets, including its current VC fund and a previously high-performing debut hedge fund. **Monolith's assets under management have reached nearly $800 million.**
01.
Chinese Name Officially Announced
Lisi Capital Launches This Spring
Monolith Lisi Capital is an investment management firm co-founded in 2021 by Xi Cao, formerly a partner at Sequoia Capital China, and Tim Wang, formerly a partner in the public markets team at Boyu Capital. Lisi Capital spans both public and private markets, including this venture fund and its previously high-performing inaugural hedge fund. Lisi Capital's assets under management now approach $800 million.
Lisi Capital's first fund is a technology hedge fund that follows a research-driven investment philosophy, focusing on public market investments in technology, software, life sciences, and consumer sectors driven by technology and innovation, as well as select late-stage private market growth companies.
Lisi Capital's venture fund focuses on technology-driven commercial innovation of all kinds, employing a research-driven, thematic investment approach to identify revolutionary entrepreneurial opportunities. Next-generation consumer internet, frontier technology, and B2B and B2C services targeting global markets are the investment themes Lisi Capital is currently tracking.
Monolith Lisi Capital is dedicated to discovering, finding, and backing the most exceptional founders, providing them with venture capital from inception through growth stages. For seed to Series A rounds, check sizes range from $2 million to $20 million; Series B and development-stage projects also fall within Lisi Capital's scope. To this end, Lisi Capital has assembled an investment team with deep industry and academic backgrounds, who will identify innovation opportunities arising from technological transformation more accurately, swiftly, and with greater foresight — in sourcing, investment research and decision-making, and post-investment support — to back the most outstanding founders.
02.
Cross-Disciplinary STEM Investment Team
With Founding and Incubation Experience
Currently, Lisi Capital has assembled an investment team drawn from senior executives at well-known domestic and international technology companies and PhD graduates from top global universities including MIT and UC Berkeley.
Notably, in building this team, Lisi Capital looked beyond traditional VC talent pools, casting its net toward research labs at elite academic institutions to create a cross-disciplinary investment team spanning STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). The team brings together talent with complementary focuses and overlapping academic backgrounds in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, computer science, and mathematics, grounded in deep and rigorous technological expertise. At the same time, in terms of industry experience, team members have worked at leading companies, founded startups, or participated in early-stage incubation, receiving ample training in business and investing and developing sufficient commercial acumen.
"We're trying to capture new trends and disruptive innovation, but these transformations typically begin at an early stage and are therefore often not fully understood. We've built an investment team with multiple disciplinary backgrounds to establish a sufficiently foundational and thorough understanding of technology, enabling us to anticipate and capture potential commercial opportunities earlier," said Xi Cao, founding partner of Monolith Lisi Capital.
At Lisi Capital, the Monolith Research Fellow program, which works in coordination with the investment team, has been operating for six months. Through this program, Lisi Capital has invited and assembled an external advisory group of university professors, industry executives, and entrepreneurs who provide in-depth research, market insights, and founder sourcing in areas of interest to Lisi Capital. This horizontally expands the investment team's cognitive breadth and vertically completes its sourcing system.
Lisi Capital's venture fund has already invested in three previously pipeline projects since the new year began. The founders all come from well-known domestic and international technology companies and university labs, with co-investors including several leading domestic and international funds.
03.
Transparent Decision-Making, Lean Organization
Cross-Market Cognitive Synergy
Lisi Capital has built a flat, lean, technically rigorous investment team with highly complementary academic and industry experience. In investment decision-making, they pursue highly transparent processes, real-time knowledge sharing, and full participation in discussion and decision-making. In organizational development, the team deliberately maintains a lean structure to reduce hierarchy, improve communication transparency, and accelerate decision speed.
Lisi Capital's decisions are rapid and concentrated, enabling swift action to capture opportunities when disruptive innovation first emerges; the research and discussion process is open to all members participating in investment committee discussions, maximizing platform synergy and cross-market cognitive synergy. In this process, Monolith Lisi Capital's public market research perspective provides VC investing with information and cognitive inputs from a different angle.
Monolith Lisi Capital's hedge fund has been operating for one year, extensively covering and accumulating deep research on several dozen world-class listed companies globally, with research shared in real time and transparently across the investment team. By observing trends, pain points, and possible decompositions of leading listed companies, and through comparative research across public and private markets, different countries, and companies at different development stages, Lisi Capital's overall investment team has gained more terminal thinking, a more global perspective, and more globally minded project sourcing.
"Over the past year, Lisi Capital's hedge fund has performed steadily well, and the team has developed its own investment research system and process. In terms of cross-market cognitive synergy and complementarity, this is a process of minimizing noise and maximizing cognition. Minimizing noise means that by tracking the world's best listed companies, we've expanded the team's horizons and depth, enabling better identification of higher-quality early-stage companies; maximizing cognition means that for emerging investment themes the VC team is targeting, by researching upstream supply chain and other listed companies, we can track such investment themes across the entire value chain, thereby identifying the best companies and optimal investment timing," said Tim Wang, founding partner of Monolith Lisi Capital.
This is the approach envisioned from Monolith's founding: thinking about investing from first principles, attempting to bridge the cognitive gap between public and private market investment teams. Through shared research and complementary cognition, drawing inspiration from emerging opportunities — "great winds rise from the tips of duckweed" — to discover new public market targets, and using "begin with the end in mind" research on leading listed companies to complete the VC team's global perspective. Through thorough understanding of technology and business, acting with agility in rapidly changing markets to capture the most promising technologies, the most commercially valuable innovations, and the most exceptional founders.
04.
Wild and Unrestrained Imagination
Down-to-Earth Execution
Monolith's Chinese name Lisi combines transliteration with literal meaning. This name, derived from a classic science fiction film, expresses the team's curiosity, exploration, and pursuit of truth regarding the ultimate secrets and wisdom of the universe. Si (think) to know, li (temper) to act — thinking and tempering together, unifying knowledge and action. They believe that resilient wisdom will inevitably yield solid results.
As a new-generation fund, Lisi Capital hopes to work alongside founders with both wild and unrestrained imagination and down-to-earth execution, creating the future together.
Lisi Capital's VC team is actively recruiting and eagerly seeking talent. If you're driven to join the VC industry — smart, self-motivated, and high-growth — send your resume directly to:
We will be in touch within three business days.
