BlueRun Ventures Quarterly Investment Roundup | 2022 Q3

Every quarter, we compile updates on funding and investment progress from BlueRun Ventures' portfolio companies.

In Q3 2022, the BlueRun family recorded 10 publicly disclosed financing events, spanning sectors including new energy, enterprise services, hard tech, and healthcare. Among these, 4 were new investments and 6 were follow-on rounds.

If you're interested in any of these projects or wish to join their teams, feel free to reach out via email: china@brv.com.cn

New Investments

Mobile Energy Service Provider

Lanli Energy closed a tens-of-millions RMB angel round

Led by BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: Founded in October 2021, "Lanli Energy" is a new energy service technology company integrating product design, R&D, and service operations. It was established by core members from leading internet teams including DiDi, Alibaba, and Tencent. Leveraging advanced energy storage technology, IoT technology, and battery detection technology, the company targets the charging challenges facing new energy vehicles under the carbon neutrality mandate, building a distributed, dynamic new energy grid integrating photovoltaic storage, charging, and inspection, and providing users with an innovative mobile, frictionless charging experience. This service has already launched in Hangzhou.

BlueRun's View: As the new energy vehicle industry grows rapidly, existing static charging and battery swap stations cannot escape constraints of time and space. There is a temporal and spatial mismatch between infrastructure and user demand, with ceilings on both experience and efficiency that prevent them from meeting all charging needs. Mobile charging, as a form of dynamic energy replenishment, is unconstrained by time and space and represents a massive market opportunity. Lanli Energy brings deep experience in charging and swapping, energy digitization, and operational efficiency. It has developed mobile charging hardware products and a dynamic energy network operations management system, upon which it is gradually building out an entire mobile energy replenishment network, comprehensively improving the charging experience for new energy vehicle owners while reducing carbon emissions. We have strong conviction in the Lanli team and believe they will become a leading brand in the new energy operations industry.

Pioneer of Freeze-Dried Coffee Cubes

Yikuai Xiaoyuzhou closed tens of millions of RMB in angel and angel+ rounds

Co-invested by BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: Founded in 2021, "Yikuai Xiaoyuzhou" was established by Lin Yang, founder and CEO of offline specialty coffee chain CUP ONE, as chief brand officer; Guang Yu, founder of China's top design studio ABCD; and Ma Chao, professor at Beijing Forestry University's College of Biological Sciences, as chief research officer. With the original aspiration of creating a new species of coffee, the founding team used food technology to transform freeze-dried coffee production processes, substantially improving quality while revolutionizing the supply chain through self-developed 3D freeze-drying production lines, establishing their own 3D freeze-dried coffee factory. The resulting coffee cubes have elevated freeze-dried coffee quality to new heights.

BlueRun's View: "Yikuai Xiaoyuzhou" is one of the few new consumer brands with strong food technology R&D capabilities. The team planned and built out a full coffee industry chain team from the early stages. Its 3D freeze-dried coffee represents a "new species" in the coffee world, innovating on raw materials and processes with high aesthetic appeal and viral potential, satisfying users' desire for "a pour-over coffee from a café, anytime, anywhere." This investment aligns well with BlueRun's consumer tech thesis of "product-driven super new species," and we look forward to "Yikuai Xiaoyuzhou" introducing more interesting, delicious, and healthy coffee "black tech" products to consumers.

Technology Innovation Company Focused on Home Smart Vision Hardware

Dunjia Technology closed a tens-of-millions RMB angel round

Led by BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: Founded in 2019, "Dunjia Technology" is a technology innovation company focused on home smart vision hardware. Based on industry-leading ISP image algorithms, CNN face recognition technology, vein reflection recognition technology, system-level optimization, and cloud platform solutions, Dunjia has built an integrated hardware-software product service system for home smart vision AIoT, providing complete solutions for core scenarios in home smart vision IoT, using vision technology to safeguard better living.

BlueRun's View: The Dunjia Technology team possesses deep expertise and experience in building smart vision technology platforms and product development. We believe smart device penetration across various scenarios will continue to experience explosive growth. As Dunjia Technology's first-round investor, we believe the team can become a leading domestic smart home products company.

High-Performance Computing Solutions Provider

Luchen Tech closed $6 million in seed and angel rounds

Led by BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: Founded in Beijing in July 2021, "Luchen Tech" has established an overseas R&D center in Singapore. Luchen Tech is committed to unleashing AI productivity. Through self-developed technologies including efficient multi-dimensional parallelism, heterogeneous memory management, large-scale optimization libraries, and adaptive task scheduling, the company has built Colossal-AI, a general deep learning system for the large model era, efficiently promoting the deployment of large AI models and helping enterprises achieve AI-driven intelligent industrial upgrades at low cost.

BlueRun's View: As AI foundation models, pre-trained model architectures, and large models evolve rapidly, AI is beginning to effectively meet customer expectations and solve real pain points. However, enterprises face high costs in training, maintaining, and inferencing AI models. To enable customers to effectively integrate broad AI capabilities throughout their business lifecycle, Luchen Tech has developed a high-performance AI operations platform whose open-source products allow users to substantially improve model training and inference efficiency without code modification, with ecosystem-friendly design. As an early investor in Luchen, BlueRun is pleased to see Luchen gaining increasing user recognition for its product leadership and global open-source ecosystem, and beginning to grow rapidly. We look forward to the company accelerating and deepening AI empowerment across industries, growing into a globally recognized AI company.

Follow-on Financing Events

Cloud-Native DataOps Platform

WhaleOps closed a new tens-of-millions RMB round

BlueRun Ventures has continued to invest since the angel round

Company Profile: Founded in August 2021, "WhaleOps" was assembled by multiple Apache Software Foundation Members and world-class data domain experts, with over a decade of deep engagement in big data open-source software R&D. Core employees are scientists and senior experts in big data technology from IBM, eBay, Informatica, Alibaba, ByteDance, and other companies, with R&D staff exceeding 90% of the team. The company possesses deep enterprise-grade data scheduling and integration capabilities in DataOps. The core team has long been deeply engaged in big data and cloud computing, dedicated to building the next-generation cloud-native DataOps platform, helping enterprises intelligently complete their data processing, scheduling, governance, and data asset management in the big data and cloud era.

BlueRun's View: Today, data is accumulating at high speed, data source technologies are highly diverse, and demands for real-time and reliable data flow are higher than ever. Enterprises face enormous challenges in managing data efficiently, reliably, compliantly, and securely. "WhaleOps" can provide enterprises with comprehensive DataOps solutions, helping them better adapt to data processing and governance in the big data and cloud-native era. The team has successfully incubated multiple well-known open-source projects and currently serves over a thousand large enterprises across internet, cloud computing, finance, telecommunications, and advanced manufacturing, serving as their core data management infrastructure. We have strong conviction in the WhaleOps team and believe it has the capability to become an internationally renowned enterprise in the DataOps domain.

Enterprise AR+AI Solutions Provider

Liangliang Vision secured a new round of funding

BlueRun Ventures invested in its Series B and B+ rounds

Company Profile: Founded in 2014, "Liangliang Vision" is dedicated to providing AR+AI industry solutions for enterprise customers. After seven years of deep cultivation in the B2B market, it has formed an end-to-end full-stack product layout, achieving full industry chain coverage from core technology to commercial scenario deployment. "Liangliang Vision" deeply integrates 5G, IoT, and big data, building multi-industry collaboration to provide enterprises with efficient AR interactive experiences. Its products and solutions have been widely adopted by leading enterprises in industries including industrial, energy, aviation, security, manufacturing, and automotive transportation, with business spanning 66 countries and regions, over 30 ecosystem partners, and serving more than 5,000 enterprise users globally.

BlueRun's View: Before the transformation of the next-generation internet began, Liangliang Vision had already spent years cultivating the core technologies encompassed by the AR track — optics, computing, operating systems, interactive applications, and cloud platforms — pushing the AR industry into stages of usability, ease of use, and practical utility, laying the foundation for scaled commercialization for both the company and the industry. BlueRun expects the company to further solidify its core technical strengths, build high leading barriers, expand application deployment, play an industry-leading role, and bring users entirely new experiences through new technologies and products.

Automotive-Grade Chip Solutions Provider

Yuntu Semiconductor closed a hundreds-of-millions RMB Series A+ round

BlueRun Ventures invested in its Pre-A and Series A rounds

Company Profile: Founded in July 2020, "Yuntu" is a fabless semiconductor and integrated circuit design company focused on automotive-grade chips, dedicated to providing comprehensive automotive-grade chip solutions for customers and safeguarding the innovation of global intelligent mobility technology. Yuntu has established a complete automotive integrated circuit design and verification platform, strictly following AEC-Q100 and ISO-26262 development process systems and technical specifications, successfully developing multiple automotive-grade MCU chips with independent intellectual property rights and applying for numerous related technology patents.

BlueRun's View: In just two short years since its founding, Yuntu Semiconductor has outpaced other comparable startups to become the first fabless company to achieve mass production of automotive-grade chips, fully demonstrating its strength as a top-tier automotive chip player. We are pleased to have witnessed the company achieving domestic zero-to-one breakthroughs in both R&D progress and mass production quality, entering a new era of mass production for automotive MCU chips. We believe that under the major trend of domestic substitution, Yuntu has the potential to become the domestic fabless company with the most complete product line and broadest coverage in automotive-grade chips.

Battery Intelligence Infrastructure Platform

Shengke Energy closed a tens-of-millions RMB Series A round

BlueRun Ventures has continued to invest since the Pre-A round

Company Profile: Founded in 2019, "Shengke Energy" is a spin-off from Tsinghua University's School of Vehicle and Mobility Battery Safety Laboratory, focused on battery intelligence technology with over 40 patents accumulated. Shengke is dedicated to building a battery intelligence infrastructure platform, with an intelligent battery digital network at its core, focusing on two major application scenarios: smart energy new infrastructure and battery intelligent inspection and recycling. In charging, energy storage, and other new infrastructure scenarios, it provides intelligent safety operations services and comprehensive solutions; in battery cascade utilization and recycling, it provides intelligent battery inspection, valuation, and trading service solutions.

BlueRun's View: As China's electric vehicle and power battery industries enter a fast lane of development, value extraction across the full lifecycle of batteries — from manufacturing to recycling — has become increasingly important, with substantial room for improvement. Based on years of deep accumulation in high-quality power battery data and mechanistic models, the Shengke team has pioneeringly formed a new paradigm of battery intelligence driven by "sensors + data + AI." As an early investor in Shengke, BlueRun continues to have strong conviction in and support for the Shengke team, helping users continuously extract and enhance full lifecycle battery value while leading industry transformation in battery intelligence through technology.

Professional RISC-V Processor IP and Solutions Company

Xinlai Technology closed a new hundreds-of-millions RMB round

BlueRun Ventures has continued to invest since the Pre-A round

Company Profile: Founded in 2018, "Xinlai Technology" is among the first batch of domestic companies to build application ecosystems based on the RISC-V open instruction set architecture and to pioneer industrialization落地. Starting from scratch, with independently controllable CPU R&D technology based on the RISC-V architecture as its source, the company has already output multiple series of RISC-V CPU IP products and related solutions. While maintaining rapid business and revenue growth, Xinlai has formed a virtuous cycle of technology and team evolution, consecutively securing heavyweight industry customers and landmark domain application cases, with over a hundred customers formally licensing Xinlai products.

BlueRun's View: Under the influence of major trends in AIoT and fundamental architecture changes, the RISC-V architecture has demonstrated strong latecomer advantages and ecosystem and commercialization progress beyond expectations. As an early investor in Xinlai Technology, BlueRun has witnessed and accompanied the Xinlai team from scratch, step by step building a highly competitive RISC-V CPU IP product matrix in the industry, an innovative full-stack SOC IP platform, and an increasingly mature ecosystem toolchain. We continue to have strong conviction in and support for the Xinlai team, which can continuously contribute important strength to promoting domestic semiconductor industry foundational technology and RISC-V ecosystem development.

Innovative Hospital Intelligent Operations Management Service Provider

Penglai Data completed two Series A rounds totaling hundreds of millions of RMB

BlueRun Ventures led its Series A round

Company Profile: Founded in 2014, "Penglai Data" is a high-tech enterprise that enhances hospital refined management and innovative services based on big data and software platforms. Penglai Data was the first in 2017 to launch a high-barrier performance evaluation system integrating RBRVS and DRGs, with this product consistently leading in中标数量. In the past two years, the company has deeply cultivated modern hospital management models, promoting innovative applications of digital technology in core application scenarios, launching an intelligent operations management system centered on lean performance, dynamic costs, intelligent budgeting, and excellent operations, alleviating hospital economic operation pressures, improving medical resource allocation efficiency, and enhancing the supply efficiency of core businesses including medical care, teaching, research, and prevention.

BlueRun's View: Under external factors including healthcare reform and the pandemic, hospitals urgently need to achieve digitalized, refined operations management. Penglai's information products for performance management, cost analysis, and specialty operations well address hospital pain points, and through years of deep cultivation have initially established good customer reputation and industry influence. BlueRun expects that under the founder's leadership, the company can further leverage its advantages in data, AI technology, and hospital management, empowering the digital intelligence transformation of China's healthcare industry.

Further Reading

BlueRun in September | Not Rejecting All Streams Makes a River or Sea

BlueRun Ventures Quarterly Investment Review | 2022 Q2

BlueRun Ventures Quarterly Investment Review | 2022 Q1

BlueRun Ventures was established in Silicon Valley in 1998. BlueRun Ventures China was established in 2005 and is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage startups.

Currently, BlueRun Ventures China manages multiple USD and RMB dual-currency funds, with assets under management exceeding RMB 15 billion, making it one of the largest early-stage funds in China. Its investment stage focuses on Pre-A and Series A, covering hard tech and innovative interaction, enterprise technology, new consumption, and healthcare. It has cumulatively invested in over 150 startups, including Li Auto, Waterdrop, QingCloud, Guazi Used Car, Qudian, Songguo Mobility, Ganji.com, Monster Charging, Yuntu Semiconductor, Machenike, Yunsheng Intelligent, Anxin Wangdun, BioMap, and others.

BlueRun Ventures has been ranked first in Zero2IPO's "China Top 30 Early-Stage Investment Institutions" and ChinaVenture's "China Best Early-Stage Venture Capital Institutions TOP30," and was named among Preqin's Top 10 global venture capital fund managers with consistently high returns.

Additionally, BlueRun Ventures has consecutively received honors from Forbes China, 36Kr, Cyzone, Caixin Media, CBNweekly, Jiemian, and other media institutions, including "China Best Early-Stage Institution of the Year," "China Top Venture Capital Institution," "Most Entrepreneurur-Friendly Early-Stage Institution of the Year," and "Most Influential Early-Stage Institution of the Year."