The unthinkable is precisely what can be thought. | 5Y News Monthly
The big news from last month.
5Y News Monthly
"5Y News Monthly" is a regular column from 5Y Capital. At the beginning of each month, we look back on the past month's news from 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 on funding, IPOs, strategic partnerships, breakthroughs, and new product launches from 5Y portfolio companies.
02 5Y Updates
News on 5Y honors, investor interviews, and thought leadership.
Note: Companies are listed in alphabetical order by pinyin.
01
Portfolio Company Highlights
Horizon Robotics and MAXIEYE Form Strategic Partnership
On August 2, Horizon Robotics, a leader in Chinese intelligent driving chips, and MAXIEYE, a full-stack intelligent driving innovation and system solution provider, announced a strategic partnership. The two companies will leverage their respective industrial chain positioning and strengths to accelerate the commercialization of advanced intelligent driving. MAXIEYE will develop navigation assistance and integrated parking-driving products based on Horizon's Journey® 5 chip for its MAXIPILOT® advanced platform serving passenger vehicle OEMs, with development expected to be completed and production-ready by 2023. Read more
HAI Robotics Named to SupplyChainBrain Global 100 Supply Chain Partners
SupplyChainBrain, a global supply chain management think tank, announced its 2022 Global 100 Supply Chain Partners selection results in August. HAI Robotics stood out from numerous nominated companies with its innovative ACR (Autonomous Case-handling Robot) technology and implementation, successfully making the list. As one of the top 100 partners in global supply chain management, HAI Robotics plays an important role in improving warehousing and logistics efficiency, enhancing customer service, and strengthening overall supply chain systems. Read more
PhiGent Robotics Completes Series A Funding
Just three months after the first closing of its $30 million Series A round, autonomous driving solution provider Beijing PhiGent Technology Co., Ltd. ("PhiGent Robotics") announced the second closing of its Series A at over RMB 100 million, co-led by Shenzhen Capital Group and Houxue Fund, with GSR Ventures continuing to increase its stake. Completing four funding rounds in less than a year since founding reflects the trust of both new and existing shareholders in PhiGent's founding team, particularly their entrepreneurial experience, technical approach, and commercial progress. Read more
JunTuo Biotech's Live Biotherapeutic Oncology Pipeline Receives FDA IND Clearance
Shenzhen JunTuo Biotechnology Co., Ltd. announced that on August 12 U.S. time, its KEX02 live biotherapeutic product pipeline in combination with PD-1 inhibitors for non-small cell lung cancer received FDA Investigational New Drug (IND) clearance to enter clinical trials. Public information shows this is among the first live biotherapeutic product (LBP) pipelines from China to receive FDA IND clearance. JunTuo Biotech is a joint venture between Shenzhen Unknown Biotechnology Co., Ltd. and Beijing Scitop Bio-Tech Co., Ltd. Read more
Kuaishou Launches B2B Brand StreamLake
On August 10, short video and live streaming platform Kuaishou held a launch event in Beijing to unveil its video cloud brand StreamLake, officially entering the B2B sector. As video transformation sweeps across numerous industries, generating massive demand for video cloud services, Kuaishou's StreamLake focuses on becoming a catalyst for video transformation, opening up its years of accumulated core audio/video and AI capabilities in productized form to provide one-stop audio/video + AI solutions. Read more
Laizanbao Group Completes New Funding Round
Laizanbao Group completed a new funding round of tens of millions of dollars in August. This marks the group's second funding round within a year; proceeds will be used primarily for new market expansion, infrastructure development, and service system optimization. Founded in 2019, Laizanbao Group positions itself as a one-stop integrated e-commerce service provider for Southeast Asian markets, offering merchants warehousing and logistics, curated supply chains, e-commerce operations, traffic marketing, and cross-border settlement services. The company has also independently developed an ERP system to assist merchants with digital management. Read more
Moore Threads and PowerLeader Form Strategic Partnership
Moore Threads Intelligent Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. and PowerLeader Computer System Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The two companies will collaborate extensively on product technology implementation, ecosystem development, and market promotion to jointly advance the adoption of Moore Threads GPU products in domestic computing equipment, paving the way for broader GPU applications while providing new directions and support for upgrading computing system performance, capabilities, and applications in China. Read more
SenseTime Launches Consumer Robot "Yuan Luobo"
On August 9, SenseTime announced the launch of its first household consumer AI product — the "Yuan Luobo SenseRobot" AI chess-playing robot. By condensing SenseTime's AI vision technology and robotic arm technology into a physical robot compact enough to fit on a home desk, the product aims to help children break away from electronic screens while improving their focus through chess learning. In a keynote speech, SenseTime Chairman and CEO Li Xu expressed hope that through innovative and leading AI technology, the company could create a robot product capable of genuine thinking and action, bringing industrial-grade AI technology into millions of households for authentic interaction with children and elders. Read more
Shukun Technology and China Unicom Guangdong Industry Internet Sign Strategic Cooperation Agreement
On August 17, China Unicom Guangdong Industry Internet and Shukun Technology signed a strategic cooperation agreement to carry out in-depth collaboration in 5G smart healthcare, supporting the intelligent development of the healthcare industry. The two parties will jointly promote medical AI cloud platform product development tailored to the industrial cluster characteristics of provinces and cities across China. Leveraging China Unicom's first-mover advantage in global 5G technology leadership combined with Shukun Technology's industry-leading digital human body imaging comprehensive intelligent solutions, they will foster deep integration and innovative applications of "5G + AI + healthcare" to cultivate new smart healthcare business formats. Read more
Pony.ai Partners with Caocao Mobility
On August 2, Pony.ai announced a partnership with Caocao Mobility, a leading domestic ride-sharing platform, to integrate their respective strengths and bring Pony.ai's autonomous mobility services to a larger-scale transportation platform, advancing the scaled deployment of Robotaxi in urban mobility scenarios. Users in Beijing can access Pony.ai's Robotaxi service (PonyPilot+) through the "Autonomous Driving" exclusive entry point on the Caocao Mobility App and mini-program homepage. Before hailing, passengers need to select the number of riders, pickup location, and destination; the riding and payment process is no different from standard ride-hailing services. Read more
Xpeng Motors and Alibaba Cloud Build China's Largest Autonomous Driving Intelligent Computing Center
On August 2, Xpeng Motors announced the completion of "Fuyao," China's largest autonomous driving intelligent computing center, in Ulanqab for autonomous driving model training. Based on Alibaba Cloud's intelligent computing platform, Fuyao delivers 600 PFLOPS of computing power (60 quadrillion floating-point operations per second), increasing Xpeng's core autonomous driving model training speed by nearly 170x. Currently, Fuyao is being used to train algorithm models for Xpeng's City NGP intelligent navigation assisted driving. Compared with highways, urban road traffic conditions are significantly more complex, with autonomous driving corner case datasets increasing in scale by over 100x. Read more
Zilliz Completes $60 Million Series B+ Round
Vector database company Zilliz announced a new $60 million funding round, successfully expanding its total Series B to $103 million. The round was led by Prosperity7 Ventures, the diversified growth fund of Saudi Aramco's Aramco Ventures, with existing shareholders Pavilion Capital (Temasek), Hillhouse, 5Y Capital, and Yunqi Capital continuing to invest. To date, Zilliz has raised a total of $113 million. The funding will be used to further expand R&D and market teams, accelerate development and commercialization of its fully managed cloud service product Zilliz Cloud, and continue advancing its global market presence. Read more
Multiple 5Y Portfolio Founders Named to 2022 Pioneer Sci-Tech Innovators Lists
The Star Market Daily released its 2022 Pioneer Sci-Tech Innovators series lists in August. Compiled in collaboration with the Shanghai Institute of Science and Technology Information (ISTIS) over more than four months of information collection, data verification, and multi-dimensional scoring, the lists recognized 97 pioneer innovators across four categories. Multiple 5Y portfolio founders were honored — Yan Tan, Co-founder & CEO of Unknown; Caida Lai, Co-founder & CEO of METiS Pharmaceuticals; Chune Ma, Founder & CEO of Shukun Technology; and Jiaji Zhou, Founder & CEO of XYZ Robotics. Read more
Multiple 5Y Portfolio Companies Named to Growth50 · 2022 China New Consumer Brands Annual Growth Power List
CBNData (China Business Network Data Center) announced the Growth50 · 2022 China New Consumer Brands Annual Growth Power List in August. Through big data analysis, in-depth interviews, and combined quantitative and qualitative research methods, the list seeks to identify Chinese new consumer brands that have demonstrated sustainable growth power through cycles. Final selections were made across eight dimensions: category, organization, product, supply chain, user, marketing, operations, and social responsibility.
5Y portfolio companies bosie,理然 (Li Ran), Xiaomi, and 逐本 (Zhuben) were named to the 2022 China New Consumer Annual Growth Power List; Moody and 每日黑巧 (Daily Dark Chocolate) were named to the 2022 China New Consumer Annual Potential Brands List; Weiqiang Huang, Founder of 理然 (Li Ran); Xi Lin, Co-founder of 每日黑巧 (Daily Dark Chocolate); Guangyao Liu, Founder of bosie; and Qianfei Liu, Founder of 逐本 (Zhuben) were named to the 2022 New Consumer Annual Influential Figures List; and 逐本 (Zhuben) was named to the 2022 China New Consumer Annual Influential Product Brands List. Read more
02
5Y Updates
5Y 3Sigma Roundtable | Humanoid Robots? Companion Robots? What Is the Future of Consumer Robotics
As technology advances and AI finds broader application, the robots of science fiction are no longer utopian imagination — they are gradually permeating our daily lives. How will consumer robots change our lives in the next decade? At the inaugural 5Y 3Sigma Roundtable, multiple robotics domain guests shared their insights. From over 300 applicants, we selected 8 robotics founders, 10 university researchers, 4 startup executives, and 22 roundtable participants to engage in distinctive, imaginative discussions with our speakers. We have excerpted some highlights, hoping they inspire you. Read more
Agora x 5Y, 2022 Fall Supersonic Program Kicks Off
On August 20, the 2022 Fall Supersonic Program launched as scheduled, with a new cohort of 20 startup partners successfully joining, covering industries including metaverse, Future of Work, and marketing. The new cohort not only expands the Supersonic community but also brings rich innovation scenarios and fresh perspectives, injecting new blood into the RTE startup ecosystem. The opening ceremony was held at "Vland · Cloud Venue," a permanent startup partner from the 2021 Fall Supersonic Program, in an online format that used "real-time interaction" to bring together partners from Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Dalian, Nanjing, and other cities as if gathered in one place. Over the next three months, this cohort of startups will officially begin their acceleration journey, advancing together with the full "Super Co-Creation Accelerator" ecosystem on the path of RTE. Read more
5Y Receives Multiple Awards from ChinaVenture, PEDaily, Rongzhong, and Qimingpian
ChinaVenture announced its 2021 Annual Investors List in August — the 16th consecutive year that ChinaVenture has published this series of Chinese venture capital and private equity rankings as an independent third-party institution. Qin Liu, Founding Partner of 5Y Capital, was named to the 2021 China Best Venture Capitalist, 2021 China Best Return Investor, and 2021 China Best Internet Industry Investor lists. Michael Mao, Partner at 5Y Capital, was named to the 2021 China Best Venture Capitalist, 2021 China Best Return Investor, and 2021 China Best AI Industry Investor lists. Ye Yuan, Partner at 5Y Capital, was named to the 2021 China Best Return Investor list. Read more
PEDaily, the venture capital and investment information platform under Zero2IPO, released its 2022 "PEDaily TOP100" investors list in August. The list compiled tens of thousands of investment data points from candidates over the past three years, comprehensively evaluating five factors: number of personal investments, personal investment amount, comprehensive return levels, and personal and institutional industry influence, selecting 100 outstanding investors who have driven the Chinese investment community from over 1,000 candidates. Qin Liu, Founding Partner of 5Y Capital, and Michael Mao, Partner, were named to the list. Read more
Rongzhong announced its 2021-2022 Annual China Industrial Investment List in August. 5Y Capital was named to the 2021-2022 China Next-Generation Information Technology Top 30 Investors and 2021-2022 China Enterprise Service Best Investors.
5Y portfolio companies Moore Threads, Xmov, and Xiaobing were selected as 2021-2022 China Next-Generation Information Technology Best Investment Cases; Juxin Microelectronics and Jaguar Microsystems were selected as 2021-2022 China Semiconductor Best Investment Cases; HAI Robotics was selected as 2021-2022 China Advanced Manufacturing Best Investment Case; Abogen and XtalPi were selected as 2021-2022 China Healthcare Best Investment Cases; and Moody was selected as 2021-2022 China New Consumer Best Investment Case. Read more
Qimingpian announced its 2022 China Equity Investment Mid-Year List, with 5Y Capital named to the 2022 China Best Venture Capital Institutions Comprehensive Top 50, 2022 China Best Venture Capital Institutions Active Top 50, 2022 China Best Investment Institutions — Healthcare Top 20, and 2022 China Best Investment Institutions — Metaverse Top 20. Read more
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