Trailblazers Carry Their Own Wind | 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 and our portfolio companies, sharing it with friends who follow us — we hope it helps you get to know 5Y better.
01 Portfolio Company Highlights
Major news about funding rounds, IPOs, strategic partnerships, breakthroughs, and new product launches from 5Y portfolio companies.
02 5Y Capital Updates
News about 5Y honors, investor interviews, and perspective pieces.
Note: Companies are listed in alphabetical order by pinyin.
01
Portfolio Company Highlights
Benmo Technology Closes Hundreds of Millions of RMB in Series B and B+ Rounds
On June 6, Benmo Technology announced the completion of its Series B and B+ financing, with total proceeds reaching hundreds of millions of RMB. The round was led by the Beijing Advanced Manufacturing and Intelligent Equipment Industry Development Investment Fund, with Legend Star, the Beijing New Materials Industry Investment Fund, and Shunxi Fund participating. Proceeds will be directed toward three main priorities: flexible motor design and production for emerging demand, continued scaling of direct-drive joint module delivery capacity, and accelerated product iteration and multi-scenario commercialization for robotics.Read more
Kingsoft Office and Huawei Cloud Deepen Strategic Partnership
On June 20, the Huawei Developer Conference (HDC 2025) opened in Songshan Lake, Dongguan, where Huawei Cloud and Kingsoft Office signed a strategic cooperation agreement. Under the agreement, Kingsoft Office will leverage its diversified product matrix and technical strengths in one-stop AI-powered office solutions, supported by Huawei Cloud's stable and reliable cloud services and its experience in international expansion, to jointly build integrated solutions.Read more
XtalPi Signs Multi-Billion Dollar Pipeline Licensing LOI with DoveTree
On June 23, XtalPi (2228.HK), a global leader in AI and robotics-driven drug and new materials R&D, announced that it had signed a letter of intent with DoveTree LLC, founded by Gregory Verdine, Harvard University tenured professor and legendary entrepreneur and investor in the US pharmaceutical industry, and expects to finalize a definitive agreement shortly based on this LOI.Read more
StepFun Powers Qianli Technology's RLM Large Model
On June 23, 2025, Qianli Technology officially released Qianli Autonomous Driving 1.0, an L2+ intelligent assisted driving solution, and unveiled its product roadmap for L3 and L4 autonomous driving. The full suite of autonomous driving solutions is built on the Qianli Autonomous Driving RLM large model, jointly developed by StepFun and Qianli Technology. Leveraging StepFun's industry-leading multimodal foundation model and advanced reinforcement learning paradigms, the Qianli Autonomous Driving RLM large model delivers safer, more comfortable intelligent driving experiences. Meanwhile, Qianli Technology is developing a next-generation intelligent cockpit product centered on AI agents, based on StepFun's industry-leading end-to-end voice large model and other multimodal capabilities.Read more
Nowcoder Deepens Partnership with Moka
On June 18, AI recruitment platform Nowcoder and Moka, a leading full-suite human resources platform, announced a major upgrade to their AI interview product integration. The upgrade enables one-click binding between Moka and Nowcoder, with core features now connected including resume-based question generation, risk point questioning, and strength and skill mining — providing companies with a more efficient and intelligent interview experience.Read more
MedSci Healthcare and Arthur J. Gallagher Sign Strategic Partnership
On June 26, 2025, MedSci Healthcare (stock code: 0314.HK), a leading corporate group health insurance brokerage and health management platform in China, and Arthur J. Gallagher (NYSE: AJG), a global insurance services group, held a strategic partnership signing symposium, marking the official launch of their five-year deep cooperation.Read more
SenseTime Signs Tripartite Strategic Partnership
On June 16, SenseTime, Shandong Dongming Petrochemical Group, and Beijing Haoya Chuangke Technology formally signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The three parties will leverage their respective strengths to jointly drive AI-powered innovation in the petrochemical industry and support intelligent transformation in the oil and gas sector.Read more
AheadForm Closes Pre-A Round
On June 26, AheadForm officially announced the completion of a new funding round, co-led by China Merchants Venture Capital and Shenzhen Capital Group, with 5Y Capital and Xunshang Venture Capital participating. Previous angel investors include Dexun Investment, MiraclePlus, Taihill, and AgiBot. Recently, a video posted by the company's founder showing a "bionic robot opening its eyes and slowly smiling" went viral on social media. The awakening scene was widely shared and referenced, with comments including "I feel like the uncanny valley is already gone!" and "It feels like there's light in her eyes."Read more
Soul App Announces Disney Licensing Partnership
On June 19, social platform Soul App officially announced a licensing partnership with Disney, introducing well-known IP including "Mickey and Minnie," "Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck," "Zootopia," and "Toy Story" to create digital collectibles (virtual avatars with artistic and collectible value for use within the Soul app). Through immersive social experiences, this builds new scenes for Gen Z's trendy cultural expression, further demonstrating Soul's platform value in leading youth social trends. The first major release, "Mickey's Dream Planet," launched on June 20.Read more
WeDoctor and Alibaba Cloud Form Strategic Partnership
On June 17, WeDoctor Holdings and Alibaba Cloud reached a strategic partnership. The two parties will jointly build an AI foundation for healthcare, co-develop full-scenario medical intelligent agents based on the Qwen large model, and construct vertical medical large models. Additionally, WeDoctor will leverage Alibaba Cloud's technical strengths to migrate from IDC to cloud, building a unified cloud-native architecture that provides robust infrastructure support for "AI + healthcare."Read more
Pony.ai and Lingnan Holdings Form Cross-Industry Partnership
On June 27, Pony.ai and Guangzhou Lingnan Group Holding Co. (hereinafter "Lingnan Holdings") signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement. Building on their respective strengths, the two parties will jointly create diverse application scenarios combining "autonomous driving + tourism," covering autonomous driving cultural tourism routes, co-branded IP products, and science education activities — aiming to enhance both parties' commercial and brand value while building a signature Guangzhou city brand.Read more
Xiaomi Unveils Major New Products at Launch Event
On June 26, Xiaomi held its "Human-Car-Home Ecosystem Launch Event," unveiling a series of highly anticipated new products spanning automobiles, smartphones, tablets, and smart wearables — including the Xiaomi YU7, Xiaomi MIX Flip 2, and Xiaomi AI Glasses — demonstrating Xiaomi's ambition in building out its intelligent ecosystem.Read more
Xpeng AeroHT and Hongxin Group Sign Agreement
On June 17, Guangdong Huitian Aerospace Technology Co. (hereinafter "Xpeng AeroHT") and Shenzhen Hongxin Cheye Investment Co. (hereinafter "Hongxin Group") formally signed a deep cooperation agreement. This partnership represents not only a deep strategic move into the flying car sector for both parties, but also a bold exploration and innovation in future mobility.Read more
Xinhuazhang Supports EDA National Innovation Center in Building Digital Chip Verification Large Model
On June 4, addressing major national needs in integrated circuit EDA, Xinhuazhang partnered with the EDA National Innovation Center — the first national-level innovation center in the integrated circuit design field — to jointly launch ChatDV, a fully self-developed LLM-based digital chip verification large model targeting increasingly prominent pain points in chip design verification.Read more
GalaxySpace Signs MOU with Nigerian National Space Research and Development Agency
On the afternoon of June 18, 2025, GalaxySpace and the Nigerian National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) signed a memorandum of cooperation in Abuja, Nigeria. Dr. Matthew Adepoju, Director General of NASRDA, attended the signing and hosted discussions, while Xiao Yining, GalaxySpace's Senior International Business Development Manager, participated in the signing ceremony on-site.Read more
Xverse and Shanghai Film Co. Form Strategic Partnership
On June 16, during the Shanghai International Film Festival, Xverse Technology and Shanghai Film Co. announced a deep strategic partnership at "SFS Gathering" hosted by Shanghai Film Group. The two parties will collaborate around "Film+" for resource synergies and innovation, jointly building a quality ecosystem for cross-industry film integration and injecting fresh vitality into China's film industry.Read more
Moonshot AI Releases First Autonomous Reinforcement Learning Agent
On June 20, Moonshot AI officially launched its first agent product — Kimi-Researcher (Deep Research) — and began small-scale grayscale testing. Built on end-to-end reinforcement learning technology, this agent achieved 26.9% Pass@1 accuracy on Humanity's Last Exam (HLE), a highly difficult AI benchmark dubbed "humanity's last exam," surpassing Claude 4 Opus (10.7%) and Gemini 2.5 Pro (21.6%) and matching Google's top research agent — representing one of the highest known performance levels to date.Read more
02
5Y Capital Updates
5Y and Multiple Partners Win Multiple Awards from 36Kr
On July 1, 36Kr released its 2025 "China Equity Investment Industry" series of rankings. 5Y Capital was named to the 2025 China Most Influential Venture Capital Firms TOP10, and 5Y founding partner Qin Liu, partner Fei Zhang, and partner Ye Yuan were named to the 2025 China Most Popular Investors Among Entrepreneurs. According to 36Kr's observations, despite short-term market pressure, the VC/PE-backed IPO market showed signs of relative recovery in Q1 2025, with Chinese companies increasingly listing in Hong Kong. Investment firms are entering a critical transformation period. Under a healthier, more sustainable, and more liquid diversified exit ecosystem, and with deepening capital market reforms, firms focused on technological innovation still have the potential to stand out in this wave of industrial upgrading.Read more
Qin Liu Named to Caijing Global Top 50 Chinese Venture Capitalists
On July 1, 2025, Caijing magazine unveiled its Global Top 50 Chinese Venture Capitalists ranking. The Caijing Global Top 50 Chinese VCs focuses on Chinese investment leaders who have consistently generated excess returns in major global venture capital markets and who have driven technological transformation and industrial innovation through forward-looking positioning. 5Y Capital founding partner Qin Liu was named to the list.Read more
2025 PEDaily TOP100 Investors Announced, Qin Liu and Fei Zhang from 5Y Named
On July 2, the 2025 "PEDaily TOP100" investors were officially announced. Now in its tenth edition, the PEDaily TOP100 has become a window for observing industry shifts. PEDaily, Zero2IPO, and the PEdata system compiled tens of thousands of investment data points for candidates since January 2023, comprehensively evaluating five dimensions: number of personal investments, personal investment amount, overall return levels, and individual and institutional industry influence. From over 1,000 candidates, they identified 100 outstanding investors who have achieved strong investment performance while driving progress in China's venture capital industry. 5Y founding partner Qin Liu and partner Fei Zhang were named to the list.Read more
What Happened in the 72-Hour AI Survival Challenge
From May 15-18, 2025, after nearly three months of preparation, the AI survival challenge initiated by 5Y finally took place in Shanghai. Over 72 hours, some participants used AI to train an AI companion, others wrote a survival song, some generated film and video works, others built virtual livestreaming studios, and some exhausted their budgets building systems and debugging plugins... Every step felt like using AI to "rewrite life."
More important than the results were the problems and possibilities that emerged along the way. Can AI help humans survive? But can it truly understand emotions, rebuild connections, solve loneliness? What boundaries can we see?Read more
They Haven't Even Graduated, and They're Already Building Their Worlds with AI | 5Y Tavern Vol. 30 x AI Native Creators
For this episode of 5Y Tavern, we invited three very young AI Native creators — Jinhao Tu, about to start university and who placed first in the preliminary round of Alibaba's Global Mathematics Competition AI track; Andy Liu, a senior at MIT about to join a top AI startup after graduation; and Chunyu Chen, who went from Tsinghua to the Bay Area to start a company. They discussed: How does AI介入 their learning and creation? How has it become part of how they explore the world and build tools? What products have caught their eye, what problems are worth rebuilding with AI? In relaxed conversation, there was also a generation of AI natives' practical judgment, methods of action, and — just a little bit of ambition to change the world.Read more
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