Biotech Firms Raise Nearly 4 Billion Yuan, Consumer Companies Land Over 1.4 Billion | FreeS Family Funding Roundup · August
We've also released three short videos this week — follow us to check them out.
The "FreeS Family Funding News" column regularly publishes funding updates from FreeS Fund portfolio companies. Besides new investments, we also cover follow-on rounds for existing portfolio companies. Together, we witness innovative enterprises taking each step from 0 to 1, 1 to 10, and 10 to 100.
This Issue at a Glance:
- Seven biotech portfolio companies announced funding rounds: Bluepha, XtalPi, ComMedX, Hibiscus Chemistry, NeuBella, ChemMind, and Coing Biotechnology. They span synthetic biology, AI drug discovery, and brain and neuroscience — all key focus areas for FreeS Fund in frontier biotech, specifically using experimentation or computation to digitize biological systems and processes.
- Three consumer portfolio companies announced funding: Kala, PatPat, and WonderLab. These brands demonstrate capabilities spanning front-end traffic acquisition, mid-level product and data operations, plus supply chain management and logistics and inventory capabilities.
(Funding information in this roundup is limited to publicly disclosed rounds from August only.)
We've also released three short videos this issue — follow us to check them out.
Here are seven FreeS Fund biotech portfolio companies that announced funding in August, along with their strong momentum. These companies represent several of the hottest directions right now — synthetic biology, AI drug discovery, and brain and neuroscience — while also reflecting FreeS Fund's investment logic and priorities in frontier biotech: using experimentation or computation to digitize biological systems and processes.
The companies announcing funding in August — Bluepha, XtalPi, ComMedX, Hibiscus Chemistry, NeuBella, ChemMind, and Coing Biotechnology — all fall into the digital and computation-driven biotech and healthcare space. Here are thoughts shared by FreeS Fund investment colleagues Rui Ma, Lei Wang, and Jiong Shen:
**/ Investor Perspectives / **
Rui Ma on five biotech companies
Click to watch 👆
First, congratulations to Bluepha on announcing its RMB 430 million Series B2 round led by multiple well-known investment institutions. Over the past six months, Bluepha's total Series B funding has exceeded RMB 600 million.
Bluepha was a FreeS Fund angel-round investment, and FreeS Fund has participated in six consecutive rounds because we believe in synthetic biology and in the greener, healthier, more functional products that biotechnology can bring. After five years of development, Bluepha has grown into a leading player in China's synthetic biology track.
Bluepha's first self-developed pipeline — the industrialization project for fully biodegradable PHA material — has been confirmed for Yancheng, Jiangsu Province. Yancheng, known as "China's offshore wind power capital," has complete supporting facilities and professional expertise that will help Bluepha realize its "biosynthesis + clean energy" vision.
The project has a planned total capacity of 100,000 tons, to be built in three phases. The Phase I production line with annual capacity of 5,000 tons will be completed and operational within 2022. Additionally, Bluepha is expanding and upgrading its digitally native R&D platform CloudLab1, which includes flexible automated experimental systems, ultra-high-throughput fermentation systems, and intelligent cloud-based data systems. Based on CloudLab1, Bluepha expects to shorten the complete R&D cycle for subsequent product pipelines by another 70%.
Congratulations again on this new round. The RMB 600 million Series B financing will help the company simultaneously push forward on building a 10,000-ton-scale self-owned factory, constructing the CloudLab1 super-platform, and maintaining high-level R&D investment — taking a crucial step toward achieving both technology and product closed loops. By making great products and building a great platform, Bluepha has chosen the harder but correct path, and FreeS Fund will definitely continue to support and accompany Bluepha's growth.
Congratulations to XtalPi on its recent $400 million Series D round, which valued the company at over RMB 13 billion post-money. New investors in this round include well-known healthcare PE firms and healthcare industry capital, while existing shareholders also added to their support.
Within one year, XtalPi completed total funding exceeding $700 million, setting a new industry record and demonstrating capital markets' recognition of and expectations for the AI drug discovery field.
FreeS Fund invested in XtalPi at an early stage. XtalPi is an AI-driven drug discovery company powered by digitization and intelligence, providing intelligent drug R&D services to global innovative pharmaceutical companies based on frontier computational physics, quantum chemistry, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing technologies.
XtalPi's core technology platform is ID4 (Intelligent Digital Drug Discovery and Development), which can accurately predict multiple important drug properties. Beyond early-stage crystal form prediction, this now includes activity, druggability, toxicity, and other metrics — comprehensively accelerating the efficiency and success rate of preclinical drug research. Relying on the ID4 platform, XtalPi has currently helped develop over 100 small-molecule drug R&D pipelines, with approximately several dozen projects where it leads drug discovery, the vast majority of which are "first-in-class."
Congratulations again, and we look forward to XtalPi achieving even greater development.
Congratulations to ComMedX, a CADD (computer-aided drug design) and AI-driven pharmaceutical R&D company, on completing a Pre-A round of tens of millions of RMB. This round was led by BAI Capital, with FreeS Fund, the lead investor in the angel round, further increasing its stake.
ComMedX was initiated in 2020 by founder Dr. Xiaobo Wan, together with Dr. Niu Huang (Senior Investigator at Beijing's National Institute of Biological Sciences), Dr. Bei Shan (founder of BioMap/百放英库), and FreeS Fund. At the end of 2020, ComMedX completed its angel round led by FreeS Fund, with BioMap participating.
In the CADD/AI drug discovery R&D track, ComMedX focuses on the "lead compound screening and optimization" stage, primarily integrating multi-disciplinary R&D technologies including ultra-large-scale molecular docking, combinatorial chemistry database construction, and AI data analysis to conduct rapid screening and optimization of lead compounds based on target protein three-dimensional structures — thereby empowering small-molecule innovative drug R&D from 0 to 1.
I see three distinguishing characteristics in ComMedX:
- AI built on top of thorough understanding of physics-based computation. The biggest pain point in AI drug discovery is the lack of large-scale, unbiased data. ComMedX's approach combining protein structure-based molecular docking with AI active learning models improves the interpretability challenge of AI predictions and enhances the efficiency of novel molecule discovery.
- Proprietary ultra-large-scale compound library and rapid docking algorithms. ComMedX's compound library is 1,000 times larger than currently mainstream commercial molecular docking libraries, reaching the scale of 1 billion to 10 billion compounds. Moreover, this library is highly scalable and fully digital — using ComMedX's proprietary algorithms, it can be rapidly accessed and deployed for molecular docking.
- Drug development experience. The ComMedX team has clinical development experience with first-in-class drugs.
The value of a technology platform must be proven by the services and products it delivers. In just over half a year since founding, ComMedX has already produced an impressive commercial track record — signing project collaboration agreements with multiple domestic small-molecule innovative biotech companies and pharmaceutical firms, securing millions of RMB in orders with profit margins above industry averages.
Congratulations to Hibiscus Chemistry, a FreeS Fund angel-round lead, on closing its Series A worth tens of millions of RMB.
Founded in 2019, Hibiscus Chemistry operates one of China's leading high-throughput catalytic screening platforms alongside commercial synthesis process development capabilities, serving as a CDMO focused on novel drug R&D.
The company's high-throughput catalytic screening platform dramatically improves R&D efficiency and cuts costs, with applications spanning small-molecule innovative drug synthesis, high-end fine chemicals, and novel agrochemicals.
Hibiscus Chemistry stands out in three key ways:
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Efficiency and precision, saving development time. In a traditional chemistry lab, screening small molecules for drug potential requires rigorously trained, experienced researchers spending months testing compounds from massive libraries. Hibiscus Chemistry's platform has built up nearly 50 major compound categories. A single researcher can run over 600 parallel micro-reactions in one day, quickly identifying optimal combinations and compressing the entire process to two weeks or even three to five days — a massive boost to drug development speed.
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Green chemistry, lower production costs. The platform also enables efficient screening of catalysts (especially precious metal catalysts) and their corresponding ligands. This dramatically improves reaction efficiency while minimizing metal catalyst usage, making pharmaceutical synthesis and new material preparation greener and more economical, and substantially reducing customers' later-stage manufacturing costs.
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Industry recognition, serving major pharma companies. The high-throughput screening platform has significantly accelerated commercial synthesis route development, enabling rapid identification of optimal process parameters for maximum reaction performance. This has substantially narrowed the technical gap between domestic companies and multinational pharma giants in commercial route development and process optimization, earning broad industry recognition.
Hibiscus Chemistry's client roster now covers nearly 100 leading domestic innovative drug companies, including BeiGene, JiMin XinKe, Betta Pharmaceuticals, Chipscreen Biosciences, Kintor Pharmaceutical, and Zai Lab.
Congratulations to NeuBabel on completing its 500 million RMB Series A. NeuBabel is a FreeS Fund angel-round lead — a Boston-based investment and another important bet for FreeS in brain and neuroscience.
Founded in July 2019 by Harvard Medical School professor Hesheng Liu, MIT academicians Guoping Feng and Robert Desimone (both fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences), and Kecheng Wei, NeuBabel operates with the mission to "break through bottlenecks in brain cognition and conquer challenges in brain diseases," dedicated to helping humanity understand, protect, and develop the brain.
NeuBabel leverages cross-disciplinary technology to achieve functional measurement at the neural circuit level and precise individual-level brain functional parcellation, laying the technical foundation for clinical fMRI applications. In just two years, the company has rapidly grown and achieved clinical breakthroughs. We believe NeuBabel will conquer brain diseases and become a global leader in the brain industry.
Brain science has been called the "last frontier" of human technology. Over the next 5–10 years, as frontier technologies advance and aging populations create massive unmet needs, we expect disruptive technologies and discoveries around brain cognition, brain diseases, and brain-computer interfaces — along with enormous commercial opportunities.
According to VB Data, Chemical.AI announced the completion of a nearly $15 million Series A+ round led by Source Code Capital, with HSG, FreeS Fund, and Huafang Capital participating.
/ What the investors say /
The AI drug discovery space is booming, yet its execution capabilities are widely questioned. Under Dr. Ning Xia's leadership, Chemical.AI has delivered a clear and definitive answer. The company has grown into a leader in AI-assisted chemical synthesis, with products deployed at top global pharmaceutical firms. Its closed-loop model of data + CRO + robotics will bring transformative change to medicinal chemical synthesis.
/ About the company /
Chemical.AI is an AI-powered chemical synthesis technology company dedicated to solving preclinical chemical synthesis challenges in novel drug R&D through artificial intelligence and chemical big data, dramatically improving molecular synthesis efficiency. The founding team has spent over a decade in cheminformatics, bringing deep R&D experience and extensive professional data accumulated across the chemical and chemical engineering industries — making them early movers in China's AI-enabled chemical synthesis segment.
The Chemical.AI team has years of experience in chemical synthesis, with notable achievements in retrosynthesis. Their proprietary algorithms drive valuable data integration and reaction prediction, continuously refining their AI-automated synthesis platform to empower their R&D staff. The company has established long-term partnerships with multiple major global pharmaceutical companies and CRO giants.
On August 26, Coing Biotechnology, dedicated to AI-enabled novel drug R&D, completed a tens-of-millions RMB Series A round led by Sherpa Healthcare Partners, with FreeS Fund — the company's angel investor — participating.
/ What the investors say /
Dr. Yikai Wang, Coing Biotechnology's founder, brings rich industry background and experience, with unique insights into novel drug R&D trends. He has made a solid transition from R&D management to investor to entrepreneur. As the company's angel investor, FreeS Fund has witnessed the founding team's execution and delivery capabilities. We deeply believe that Coing Biotechnology's underlying innovation and efficiency improvements will help original innovative drugs from China reach global patients as soon as possible.
/ About the company /
Since its founding, Coing Biotechnology has rapidly built a first-principles-based de novo drug design platform capable of systematically exploring the full chemical space, enhancing virtual discovery capabilities against novel targets. By efficiently integrating upstream and downstream partners, the team maximizes internal and external R&D synergies, substantially improving DMTA cycle efficiency while reducing trial-and-error costs and timelines. Leveraging the discovery platform's iterative optimization capabilities, the company has already made significant progress against multiple early-stage targets in tumor metabolism in less than a year.
The founding team graduated from top domestic and international institutions including Harvard University, University of Cambridge, Peking University, and Chinese Academy of Sciences, bringing extensive industry experience and years of accumulated expertise across chemical biology, biophysics, computational chemistry, and artificial intelligence. The team focuses on unmet clinical needs in oncology and immunology, targeting early-stage markers with translational advantages, striving to deliver globally first-in-class small-molecule drugs to patients in the shortest possible time. The company attracted attention from major global pharma companies from day one, becoming a member of the first cohort of Roche China's Accelerator.
Further Reading
1. Novel Drug R&D Special Research Report
Here is a report by Coing Biotechnology founder Yikai Wang: FreeS Report 23: Crossing the "Valley of Death": Systematic New Opportunities in Small-Molecule Novel Drug R&D — an analysis of why now is a good time for novel drug R&D innovation, and what kinds of companies can seize the opportunity. (Click the blue link to access the report directly.)
2. Funding news for the 7 biotech portfolio companies mentioned above:
*Bluepha: Bluepha Completes 430 Million RMB Series B2 Financing
*Mujin Chemistry: [Yida Capital] "Yi" News | Yida Capital Leads Investment in Mujin Chemistry to Accelerate and Elevate China's Innovative Drug R&D
*NeuroXess: [VB Data] Exclusive | Neuroscience Company NeuroXess Closes 500 Million RMB Series A Round, Accelerating Path to Brain Industry Leadership
*ChemMind: [VB Data] Exclusive | Source Code Capital Leads ~$15 Million Series A+ Round in ChemMind, Building Industry-Leading Intelligent Chemical Synthesis Platform
*Kyin Therapeutics: [VB Data] Exclusive | Kyin Therapeutics Raises Tens of Millions RMB in Series A Round, Applying First Principles to Advance Oncology Metabolism Drug Discovery
Three FreeS Fund portfolio companies in the consumer sector also announced new funding rounds in August: colored contact lens brand Kilala, cross-border e-commerce brand PatPat, and new nutrition brand Wonderlab. These brands possess capabilities spanning front-end traffic acquisition, mid-platform product and data management, supply chain management, and logistics and inventory control. Below are Feng Shu's reflections on accompanying these companies' growth:
According to 36Kr, domestic colored contact lens brand Kilala has completed consecutive Series B and B+ rounds totaling over 400 million RMB — the largest single disclosed funding amount in the colored contact lens track to date. The round was led by Sinovation Ventures ZhiFu Growth Fund and Farwing Capital, with participation from Jinding Capital, Cornerstone Capital, and Qianhai Equity Investment FOF. Existing shareholders FreeS Fund and KIP China continued to follow on.
**/ Investor Perspective / **
Watch Feng Shu analyze opportunities in the colored contact lens industry
Click to watch 👆
Huge congratulations to Kilala for securing two funding rounds within a single year. We're also honored to have become Kilala's first institutional investor in early 2020. Kilala's online sales of contact lenses and colored lenses have consistently ranked among the top — truly remarkable achievements.
▍What advantages does a decade of industry experience give Kilala?
A year and a half ago, when we first invested in Kilala, several factors significantly influenced our decision:
First, founder Songgeng Zhao is young but has already spent ten years in the contact lens industry — a sector with high barriers to entry and strong competitive moats. Zhao has navigated different phases of the internet and e-commerce, as well as distinct development stages of contact lenses themselves. These phases reflect not only changes in Chinese consumption and e-commerce, but also evolving user needs.
Because contact lenses are classified as medical devices, they must be regulated and sold as such. And since they're products inserted into the body, requirements around supply chain, manufacturing, materials, safety, and comfort far exceed those of ordinary fast-moving consumer goods.
It's precisely because of this decade of accumulated insight into supply chain and internet evolution — plus Kilala's foundational understanding of user needs and commitment to product safety — that the company has maintained top sales rankings even as colored lenses emerged as a hot new category over the past two years.
▍From annual to daily disposables: what does the "fast-moving consumer goods" transformation of colored lenses mean?
Beyond the ten-year industry foundation and the special category characteristics, user demand for colored lenses has shifted: from optical frames to contact lenses, then to colored lenses, while simultaneously the replacement cycle moved from semi-annual and annual disposables to daily disposables. This means colored lenses have transformed from consumer goods to high-frequency FMCG.
Because colored lenses became fast-moving goods with added self-expression and aesthetic functions, they now combine attributes of cosmetics, FMCG, and medical products. This category crossover represents both a major new shift and, happening within a high-barrier industry, an opportunity to reshape and innovate brands.
▍The "second round" thesis: why can colored lenses produce global brands?
We believe in "second round" opportunities in consumer goods — Chinese brands going international typically occurs in the second cycle of a major consumer category, and contact lenses fit this pattern perfectly.
As supply chains shift to Asia and China, and as relevant brands gradually emerge here, the contact lens industry is entering its second round. As the category evolves from clear contact lenses to colored lenses, China is particularly well-positioned to leverage supply chain migration, manufacturing advantages, changing consumer needs, and the rapid response enabled by highly penetrated e-commerce to produce outstanding contact lens and colored lens brands with Chinese origins.
▍The internet enables rapid new product launches and massive SKU portfolios for colored lenses
Beyond deep supply chain expertise and riding the contact lens industry transformation, Kilala's internet DNA gives it significant model advantages in adapting to the shift from clear to colored lenses.
When contact lenses become colored lenses, companies must dramatically expand SKUs to satisfy personalized choices. As a high-frequency consumer good, users need continuous repurchase of diverse, colorful options. This extreme variety creates SKU management and new product launch challenges. The internet excels at managing massive SKU portfolios — attempting offline distribution, inventory, SKU management, display, and promotions across 100 or 200 stores would be extraordinarily difficult.
Internet-native business models represent the most efficiency-responsive approach to this trend, and Kilala has accumulated ten years of operational experience and advantages leveraging the internet.
▍Deep supply chain and product innovation to build stronger brand moats
Returning to our original thesis: Kilala must first and foremost be a great product, especially given its medical device attributes. Among colored lens brands we know, Kilala likely has the longest industry track record as an online brand while maintaining consistently rapid growth.
Finally, while congratulating Kilala on this funding, we look ahead three years hoping it becomes not only China's leading contact lens and colored lens brand, but also a global brand.
**/ Company Details / **
Founded in 2011, Kilala targets Gen Z consumers aged 18-24, offering colored contact lenses plus eye care solutions including lens solution, lubricating drops, and steam eye masks. Sales doubled year-over-year for five consecutive years from 2016 to 2020. In 2020, it ranked first in Tmall Double 11 and Double 12 colored lens sales.
According to official company information, Kilala's colored lens sales surpassed international brands including Hydron, Bausch & Lomb, and Johnson & Johnson in China's online market beginning May 2020; from July 2020, it ranked first in daily and semi-annual disposable colored lens sales across all platforms. Its hit hyaluronic acid daily disposable colored lenses sold 270,000 boxes monthly, topping Tmall's colored lens category for six consecutive months with #1 single-link sales and single-SKU revenue exceeding 10 million RMB. 2020 brand GMV approached 500 million RMB, up 400% year-over-year. (See [36Kr] 36Kr Exclusive | Domestic Colored Lens Brand "Kilala" Raises Over 400 Million RMB Across Two Rounds, Largest Single Disclosed Funding in Colored Lens Track)
According to Sina Technology, children's DTC brand PatPat announced a $160 million Series D2 round exclusively invested by SoftBank. This round came just one month after its previous major funding.
**/ Investor Perspective / **
Feng Shu shares the untold story and accumulated foundation behind PatPat's unicorn status
Click to watch 👆
**/ Company Details / **
Founded in 2014 in Silicon Valley, PatPat entered through children's clothing with ambitions to build a global brand serving family consumption scenarios. As millennials and Gen Z become the driving force in online maternity and baby commerce, their emphasis on individuality, quality, aesthetics, and IP has become the growth frontier for children's apparel markets and brands. (See [Sina Technology] PatPat Announces $160 Million Series D2 Round from SoftBank)
According to PEDaily, new nutrition brand WonderLab has received investment from Temasek.
**/ Investor Take / **
Congratulations to WonderLab on its new round of funding.
WonderLab is a textbook example of the dramatic growth seen since the pandemic began in 2020. With people stuck at home and exercising less, demand for meal replacements surged. Then, as gyms remained closed and summer approached, the sudden urge to lose weight fast ignited WonderLab's first wave of growth. After that, a steady drumbeat of WeChat Moments ads kept the brand "trending" across social media.
As the domestic outbreak gradually subsided, WonderLab actively expanded its product line beyond meal replacements into probiotics, dietary fiber powder, and other wellness products. The company's trajectory aligns with the long-term shift in post-pandemic eating habits — the future looks promising.
**/ Company Details / **
Just ten months after its founding, WonderLab claimed the top spot in Tmall's meal replacement category, with first-year sales exceeding RMB 60 million and cumulative sales across all channels now surpassing 30 million bottles. Beyond meal replacements, its product portfolio includes probiotic and dietary fiber lines.
Beyond its signature "chubby bottle" design, WonderLab is better known for its formidable marketing muscle — most notably its WeChat Moments campaigns, but also heavy promotion by influencers and KOLs on Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin; cross-brand IP collaborations with HEYTEA, Supermonkey, and QQfamily; and celebrity partnerships including brand ambassador Jin Chen and brand spokesperson Liu Yuxin, all deployed to capture consumer mindshare through full-funnel, omnichannel reach. (See [PEDaily] New Nutrition Brand "WonderLab" Completes Strategic Funding Round, Backed by Temasek)
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