FreeS Fund Lands on 36Kr's "Top 10 Dark Horse Funds in China," Hard Tech Bets Earn LP Recognition

On April 25, 2019, at the 2019 China Fund Partners Future Summit hosted by 36Kr, FreeS Fund took home three awards:

• "China Top 10 Dark Horse Funds"
• "Most LP-Followed Dark Horse Investment Firm in AI/Hard Tech"
• "China Top 10 Most LP-Followed Dark Horse Fund Investors," with founding partner Li Feng making the list

As a new business media outlet with deep roots in China's venture capital industry, 36Kr interviewed 3,700 investment institutions and the top 50 fund-of-funds in China, compiled and analyzed 3,000 funding projects and nearly 5,000 funding events, and combined data research with LP interviews to produce this authoritative ranking of China's venture capital and private equity industry.

The selection criteria included AUM, new capital raised, investment scale and deal count, and IRR/multiples on portfolio companies from 2015 to 2018 — offering an objective snapshot of current performance across Chinese VC and PE firms.

The "dark horse" list specifically recognizes fund managers that are relatively young but have already delivered outsized returns to LPs. Their GPs typically held senior roles at established "white horse" institutions, boast strong track records, and have proven themselves with performance in a short time since founding. Making the "China Top 10 Dark Horse Funds" is a validation of FreeS Fund's investment record over its first three-plus years.

A dual-currency fund active in both China and the U.S., FreeS Fund takes a research-driven approach and diversifies across sectors to mitigate cyclical risk. Even in 2018, widely perceived as a funding winter, the growth momentum of its portfolio companies never slowed. FreeS Fund's first RMB fund backed 104 companies, nearly 70% of which went on to raise follow-on rounds, with 16 reaching valuations above 1 billion RMB.

FreeS Fund was also honored as the "Most LP-Followed Dark Horse Investment Firm in AI/Hard Tech," a sign that its strategy and deployment in hard tech are beginning to draw attention and recognition from LPs.

While consumer-facing innovation happens daily, China's technological innovation strength is also rising. Since its founding, FreeS Fund has pursued opportunities in both consumer and deep tech. On the consumer side, it has backed star companies including Three Squirrels, Club Factory, Huasheng Haoche, and Onion Math. In technology — spanning AI, new materials, clean energy, chips and sensors, IoT, and medtech — FreeS Fund has built out its own investment map, backing several globally leading tech enterprises:

• In AI and chips, SoundAI is one of the world's leading innovators in acoustic voice technology and language intelligence services, serving major enterprise clients including Huawei, BAT, Xiaomi, and 360; NextVPU's AI vision processor chip N171 set new world records on multiple benchmarks;
• In new materials, FreeS Fund invested in QingTao Development, the world's first mass producer of solid-state lithium batteries;
• In synthetic biology, its portfolio company Bluepha is the world's only full-range PHA bioplastics provider;
• In medtech, Novita developed the world's first anti-cancer drug to reach clinical trials for preventing cancer metastasis; Singleron signed a global exclusive licensing agreement with Yale University for microfluidic single-cell processing patents, aiming to bring breakthrough single-cell analysis technology to clinical testing, health management, and drug development; and XtalPi is a world-leading, computation-driven drug discovery company that has partnered with pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer and Roche.

Though these projects may not have the star power of TMT deals, they address critical needs in industrial upgrading, serve as important drivers in their respective sectors, and have consequently delivered rapid business growth and strong equity appreciation.

Beyond these two institutional awards, FreeS Fund founding partner Li Feng was named to the "China Top 10 Most LP-Followed Dark Horse Fund Investors." Before joining FreeS Fund, Li Feng was a partner at IDG Capital. Over the past decade, he led investments in a string of outstanding startups including 360 DigiTech (NASDAQ: QFIN), Yirendai (NYSE: YRD), LAIX (NYSE: LAIX), Bilibili (NASDAQ: BILI), Three Squirrels, Shunshun Liuxue, QingTao Energy, Club Factory, NextVPU, Unity, SoundAI, XtalPi, Onion Math, Tingjiandan, 2:10 Animation, Jiuzhou Yunjian, and Changmugu Medical. Among these, 360 DigiTech was FreeS Fund's 2018 IPO, and was recently named by ChinaVenture as one of the "Top 10 Best Internet Industry Exits of 2018."

These weighty honors are also an expectation. FreeS Fund will continue to believe in long-term value, and to do what is right rather than what is easy.

Click "Read More" to view the full rankings.

▲ Our Three Years: Exploring, Persisting, Moving Upward

▲ FreeS Fund Wins Three Awards at ChinaVenture's 2018 Annual Rankings

▲ Onion Math Closes 300 Million RMB Series D, FreeS Fund Follows On