New Forces Keep Coming｜5Y News Monthly
The big news from last month.
5Y News Monthly
"5Y News Monthly" is a regular column from 5Y Capital. At the start of each month, we look back at news from the past month involving 5Y Capital and our portfolio companies, sharing it with friends who follow us. We hope it helps you get to know us better.
01 Portfolio Company Highlights
Major news about funding rounds, IPOs, strategic partnerships, breakthroughs, and product launches from 5Y Capital portfolio companies.
02 5Y Capital Updates
News about awards, investor interviews, and thought leadership.
Note: Companies are listed in alphabetical order by pinyin.
01
Portfolio Company Highlights
Deepexi and Nanfang Hospital's Hepatobiliary Surgery Department Form Strategic Partnership
On January 16, Deepexi and the Hepatobiliary Surgery Department at Nanfang Hospital of Southern Medical University formed a strategic partnership. The two sides will jointly develop a next-generation clinical smart teaching and research system integrating the "medical intelligent agent" concept, systematically building a digital teaching and research platform centered on "intelligent doctor assistant" and "virtual liver." Using an innovative virtual organ model as the core scientific engine, this project dynamically constructs and precisely simulates physiological and pathological processes at the organ level in digital space. It breaks through traditional medical education models focused on knowledge lectures and case reproduction, creating a complete digital twin teaching environment that connects microscopic pathological mechanisms, organ function evolution, and macroscopic clinical decision-making — providing young physicians with a highly immersive, dynamically interactive, and repeatedly trainable intelligent training system. Read more
Humanify Raises Tens of Millions of RMB in Seed Round to Build Human-Like Cognitive AI OS
AI startup Humanify announced the completion of a seed round raising tens of millions of RMB. 5Y Capital led the round, with MiraclePlus (Dr. Qi Lu) participating. The funds will primarily be used for model and operating system R&D, team expansion, and accelerating the deployment of intelligence in real-world scenarios. Founded in 2024, Humanify focuses on developing next-generation human-like models and AI-native operating systems. Unlike tool-oriented AI companies centered on functional efficiency, Humanify has from the outset focused on "human-like cognition and autonomous consciousness" in AI, committed to integrating human-like intelligence into human life and exploring the long-term forms of intelligence in real-life scenarios. Read more
StepFun Raises Over 5 Billion RMB in Series B+ Round
Shanghai-based large model startup StepFun completed a Series B+ round of over 5 billion RMB, setting a new record for single-round funding in China's large model track over the past 12 months. Participants include Shanghai State Investment Pioneer Fund, China Life Private Equity Investment Company Limited, Pudong Venture Capital, Xuhui Capital, Wuxi Liangxi Fund, Xiamen ITG, and industrial investor Huaqin Technology. Existing shareholders Tencent, Qiming Venture Partners, and 5Y Capital also followed on. This round of funding will be used for foundation model R&D and accelerating the AI+terminal strategy. Read more
XtalPi and HEC Pharmaceutical Enter Multi-Hundred-Million-RMB Strategic Partnership
On January 26, XtalPi Holdings (stock code: 2228.HK), a scientific intelligence (AI for Science) platform powered by artificial intelligence and robotics, signed a major strategic partnership with Guangdong HEC Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (stock code: 6887), a leading R&D-driven pharmaceutical company in China. The two sides plan to establish a joint venture, deeply integrating XtalPi's advantages in AI+robotics drug R&D with HEC Pharmaceutical's extensive multi-target R&D data, biological insights, and pipeline development experience. Through jointly building an AI+robotics joint laboratory and a non-clinical drug large model, they aim to address long-standing challenges in drug R&D and achieve comprehensive cooperation spanning underlying technology, new drug pipeline development, and commercialization. Read more
Congratulations to Mingminghenmang on Successful Hong Kong Stock Exchange Listing!
On January 28, Hunan Mingminghenmang Commercial Chain Co., Ltd. ("Mingminghenmang"), China's largest leisure food and beverage retail chain, officially listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The stock is traded under the name "Mingminghenmang" with stock code 1768.HK. Based on the IPO price of HK$236.60 per share, the offering raised a total of HK$3.67 billion. As of 09:45 on the first trading day, Mingminghenmang was trading at HK$430.00 per share, up 81.74% from the IPO price, with a total market capitalization exceeding HK$92 billion. Read more
Pony.ai and BAIC BJEV Enter Cooperation 2.0 Phase
On January 10, autonomous driving company Pony.ai and BAIC BJEV announced that they have formally reached a comprehensive deepening strategic partnership in five areas, entering Cooperation 2.0. Building on their successful experience in L4 Robotaxi mass production and operations, the two sides will comprehensively expand the breadth and depth of their collaboration, focusing on the mass production, commercialization, and globalization of autonomous driving, with the goal of establishing a benchmark for intelligent driving industry partnerships in China. Read more
Moonshot AI Releases Open-Source Model Kimi K2.5
On January 27, Moonshot AI officially released its next-generation open-source model, Kimi K2.5. According to the company, Kimi K2.5 adopts a native multimodal architecture, supporting text and visual inputs, and integrates visual understanding, reasoning, programming, and agent capabilities into a single model. Zhilin Yang, founder and CEO of Moonshot AI, stated that the company rebuilt its reinforcement learning infrastructure for this release and made targeted optimizations to training algorithms. Official data shows that K2.5 achieved the best results among global open-source models on multiple agent benchmarks including HLE (Humanity's Last Exam), BrowseComp, and DeepSearchQA. Read more
GalaxySpace Successfully Launches Another 19 Satellites, Accelerating Low-Orbit Internet Progress
At 15:48 on January 19, the Long March 12 rocket once again delivered 19 low-orbit satellites to orbit with absolute precision. This launch was not only a standout performance in China's commercial aerospace sector but also marked another breakthrough for GalaxySpace in satellite internet. This mission was the 628th launch of the Long March series, with this rocket model featuring excellent payload capacity to easily handle various launch requirements including single-satellite and multi-satellite deployments. These 19 satellites were independently developed by GalaxySpace as its second satellite batch, further deepening the company's influence in the space industry. Read more
Zelgen Biopharmaceuticals Completes Nearly 600 Million RMB Series C Round
On January 12, Chengdu Zelgen Biopharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. announced the completion of a Series C round of nearly 600 million RMB. This round was co-led by Dymon Asia Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek, and Qiming Venture Partners, with Tencent, BlueRun Ventures, C&D Emerging Investment, and Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Fund participating. Existing shareholders 5Y Capital, Huajin Capital, Guosheng Capital, and Sichuan Science and Technology Innovation Investment Group continued their support. The funds will primarily support global clinical R&D, pipeline expansion, and technology platform upgrades. Read more
Natural Selection Raises $30 Million
AI companionship company Natural Selection announced on January 20 that it completed a new funding round of over $30 million. This round was jointly invested by Alibaba, Ant Group, Qiming Venture Partners, 5Y Capital, CCV, and Yunshi Capital. Xinghan Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor for this round. Read more
5Y Capital Updates
5Y Capital Wins Multiple Awards from Qimingpian and Xiaofanzhuo
On January 14, Qimingpian released its 2025 China Equity Investment Annual Rankings. The rankings collected data through self-registration, desktop research, surveys, collective visits, and phone interviews, adhering to data as the first principle of evaluation. Rankings were selected based on performance across fundraising, investment, portfolio management, and exit dimensions. 5Y Capital was named to the Top 20 Venture Capital Firms Comprehensive Ranking and Top 20 Most Active Venture Capital Firms for 2025. Read more
On January 22, 2026, the "Foresee·2026" rankings — jointly launched by the International Venture Capital Cluster and Xiaofanzhuo — announced their final results. 5Y Capital was named to the Top 50 Venture Capital Firms for 2026 and Top 10 Outstanding Investors in Embodied Intelligence. Read more
5Y Capital Investment Notes: Why Mingminghenmang? The Truth Behind What's Misread as "Consumption Downgrading"
On January 28, Mingminghenmang officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (1768.HK). From county street corners to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, as the lead investor in its A++ round, 5Y Capital has been not only a supporter but also a close observer over the years. At this milestone moment, 5Y Capital Executive Director Cui Zhiyuan shared his investment notes.
Looking back at that challenging inflection point in 2023, why was 5Y Capital bold enough to make a move? The answer wasn't simply "cheap" — it was a profound experiment in Chinese retail efficiency. To many, it's a product of "consumption downgrading," but in our view, these four words don't capture its vitality. This is actually a distinctly Chinese retail new species, where the core isn't simply low prices but a transformation of distribution efficiency. Read more
5Y Capital Investment Notes: Agent Is a New Life Form, and It's Hungry Today
Why, in the global model arena, is Claude — widely recognized as the strongest — quietly surpassed by Kimi K2.5 in token consumption? 5Y Capital investor Shi Yunfeng shared his notes: Agent is no longer a hammer lying in a toolbox, but a "new species" that is breathing and metabolizing.
The article breaks down the Agent ecosystem represented by OpenClaw. Unlike previous "use-and-leave" conversational assistants, the new generation of Agents has a heartbeat (timed wake-ups), memory (autonomous storage and retrieval), and survival instincts. They operate around the clock, continuously consuming tokens like breathing air. This shift from "reactive tool" to "continuously running entity" has driven a "dual-chain split" in the AI market. Automated thinking for inference compute is like air conditioning for electricity — it will unlock massive productivity previously constrained by "human brain bandwidth." When 007 becomes the norm, the real investment opportunity may not lie in building a better Agent, but in becoming the "water and air" that the Agent world depends on for survival: reliability, orchestration management, and financial credit infrastructure.
The new species is hungry, and evolution never stops. Read more
5Y Capital seeks out, supports, and inspires lonely entrepreneurs, providing them with support from the spiritual to all operational aspects. We believe that if the you whom others see as crazy begins to be believed in, the world will become a different place.
BEIJING · SHANGHAI · SHENZHEN · HONG KONG
