BlueRun Ventures Quarterly Investment Roundup | 2023 Q1

Every quarter, we round up the latest financing news from BlueRun Ventures' portfolio companies.

In Q1 2023, the BlueRun family recorded 14 publicly disclosed financing events, spanning artificial intelligence, enterprise software, hard tech, and biotech. Of these, 8 were new investments and 6 were follow-on rounds.

If you're interested in any of these projects or looking to join a team, reach out to us at china@brv.com.cn.

New Investments

Innovative Human-Computer Interaction Product Platform

Yuanlai Technology closes tens of millions of RMB in angel funding

Solely invested by BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: Founded in 2020, Yuanlai Technology is a product platform company focused on innovative human-computer interaction. Leveraging neurofeedback mechanisms from neuroscience, with proprietary rare alloy materials and digital content encoding as its two core technical moats, the company pioneered the Multi-frequency Waveguide System (MWS). Built on its underlying module technology, the company can enable applications across multiple domains including sleep, automotive, and entertainment. The team brings strong interdisciplinary expertise spanning materials, sensors, cognitive science, and psychoacoustics, with integrated hardware-software capabilities. It holds 12 patents and 52 publications.

BlueRun's Take: Next-generation human-computer interaction innovation has long been a key focus area for us. Yuanlai Technology's MWS — built on material innovation and underlying control algorithm breakthroughs — represents a highly imaginative foundational technology platform in this direction. We look forward to seeing more innovative application scenarios built on this platform.

CAX Industrial Software Company

Shuyu Technology closes tens of millions of RMB in Pre-A funding

Solely invested by BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: Shuyu Technology officially launched operations in July 2020. Founder and CEO Dr. Lifeng Wang graduated from the State Key Laboratory of CAD&CG at Zhejiang University's Department of Computer Science. He was among the first principal researchers at Microsoft Research Asia and is a recognized expert in CAD/CAE and computer graphics, with over 20 years of R&D experience and 20 related U.S. patents. The team also includes scientists and software elites from international industrial software giants including former Autodesk.

BlueRun's Take: The dominant paradigm in industrial design has long been the waterfall model's serial approach, resulting in long design cycles and inefficiencies in structural design and simulation. Shuyu's pioneering CAD/CAE collaborative design cloud platform for injection molds, built on an integrated data-and-AI product architecture, dramatically improves design and simulation efficiency while enhancing usability. The company's AI-based, next-generation, fully autonomous geometric constraint solver fills a critical gap in China's industrial design software core components. The founder and core team possess deep expertise in both the underlying technologies of industrial design software and AI. BlueRun Ventures is bullish on the next-generation integrated CAX trend and believes the Shuyu team can drive meaningful, lasting impact on the industry.

Developer of Innovative Biologics for Chronic Metabolic Diseases

Zhitai Bio closes hundred-million-RMB Series B

Led by BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: Founded in September 2018, Zhitai Bio's core team comes from leading domestic and international companies including Novo Nordisk and Gan & Lee, with long-standing expertise in recombinant protein drug development. The company specializes in recombinant protein therapeutics produced via E. coli expression systems, dedicated to developing innovative biologics for chronic metabolic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease to improve public health management and quality of life.

BlueRun's Take: Among domestic GLP-1RA R&D companies, those with independent fatty acid modification technology capabilities are exceedingly rare — Zhitai Bio stands out as the most differentiated. Directly benchmarking against semaglutide, the company employs proprietary long-acting technology with the potential for once-monthly dosing, aspiring to surpass semaglutide in both efficacy and compliance. Zhitai has also systematically laid out higher-difficulty oral and dual-target GLP-1RA drugs. We see Zhitai becoming a significant player in the metabolic disease space domestically and globally, capturing advantages in the rapidly growing weight management market.

Metaverse Spatial Computing Platform Company

WeHalo Space-Time closes tens of millions of RMB in Pre-A funding

Led by BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: Spun out from Wayz.ai as an independent brand, WeHalo Space-Time applies spatial computing intelligence platforms and spatial AIGC technology to build digital-physical integrated urban metaverse spaces, creating immersive large-scale spatial experiences that blend virtual and physical worlds to deliver future offline space experiences and services. Team members bring experience from top-tier companies including Google, Microsoft, Magic Leap, Tencent, and NetEase.

BlueRun's Take: The AGI revolution sparked by ChatGPT will explode in vertical scenarios. WeHalo's chosen track of online-offline integrated metaverse, from its underlying AR point cloud + 3D high-precision map data built into an AGI-empowered spatial computing engine, to its application layer "using virtual to strengthen physical" — guiding users into both online and offline scenarios and enabling interaction with the physical world across devices for "information, services, and experiences" — realizes the vision of "space as interface."

Brain-Computer Intelligence Fusion Company

Weiling Medical closes tens of millions of RMB in angel funding

Led by BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: Founded in April 2019, Weiling Medical focuses on developing medical-grade fully implantable wireless brain-computer interface systems and is an internationally leading enterprise with full-chain autonomous technology in implantable BCIs. Team members include senior researchers from leading U.S. BCI research institutions including Northwestern University, Brown University, Duke University, University of Pittsburgh, as well as the National Institutes of Health and FDA. Current achievements include nano-enhancement technology for neural signal sensing, improving polymer sensors' neural signal detection performance while ensuring more robust structure and longer service life.

BlueRun's Take: Brain-computer interfaces represent a complex, multi-disciplinary engineering challenge requiring capabilities spanning from scientific to engineering innovation. The Weiling Medical team is currently among the international leaders in full-chain autonomous technology for minimally invasive implantable BCIs, representing the cutting edge of BCI technology globally. We are pleased to lead this round in supporting a team with such original innovation capabilities, and will continue monitoring progress in BCI and neurobiology applications for medicine.

North American Next-Gen Last-Mile Delivery Platform

UniUni closes 100 million RMB Series B

Invested by BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: UniUni uses a batch-dispatch crowdsourcing model with high-tech, asset-light, and lean-staffing approaches to significantly reduce delivery costs, provide higher service quality, offer competitive income opportunities for ordinary car owners, and achieve emissions reduction for environmental benefit. Currently, UniUni covers 60%+ of Canada's population across 9 provinces and 100+ cities, with 6,000 registered drivers processing over 90,000 peak daily orders. Full population coverage of 90-95% is expected for 2023.

BlueRun's Take: Every generational shift in commercial flow patterns reshapes logistics — validated across China, Southeast Asia, and beyond. UniUni not only fully applies internet crowdsourcing, data-driven matching, and AI-optimized routing to logistics scenarios; more importantly, the founder's demonstrated strategic acumen, relentless pursuit of customer satisfaction, and deep commitment to sharing value with employees and partners all convince us this is a team and mission worth fully supporting.

Silicon Carbide (SiC) Power Semiconductor Company

Xingan Technology closes hundreds of millions of RMB in Series B

Continued investment from BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: In 2022, Xingan Technology launched its proprietary high-performance, high-reliability SiC MOSFET products and began customer sampling. Compared to mainstream domestic and international competitors, Xingan's 1200V 80mΩ SiC MOSFET product delivers 40% lower switching losses and significantly lower leakage current, among other competitive advantages.

BlueRun's Take: The rapid development of the new energy industry is driving explosive demand for high-quality upstream supply chains. SiC power devices, as next-generation power semiconductors, demand extremely high standards in design and process. The Xingan team possesses exceptionally deep accumulation and rich development experience in the SiC field, along with profound insight into downstream applications and precise grasp of customer needs. We believe the Xingan team will become a top-tier domestic SiC semiconductor enterprise.

Manned Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) Aircraft Company

TCab Tech closes 100 million RMB Pre-A round

Continued investment from BlueRun Ventures

Company Profile: TCab Tech has developed the tiltrotor-configured E20 eVTOL with high reliability, low cost, and commercial viability in mind, dedicated to building a green, sustainable digital transportation ecosystem and providing safe, convenient aerial mobility services for society.

BlueRun's Take: Electrified vehicles have long been a key focus area for BlueRun. With the maturation of upstream supply chains such as batteries, we believe eVTOL will accelerate toward product realization and commercial deployment. TCab Tech is a leading domestic eVTOL company whose team brings rich experience in R&D, airworthiness certification, and commercial operations. We believe TCab will become a world-leading eVTOL company, helping China become a frontrunner in aerial mobility.

Follow-On Rounds

Large New Energy Intelligent Mining Truck Company

Yimoo Technology closes over 100 million RMB Series A

BlueRun Ventures led its angel round

Company Profile: Founded in August 2021, Yimoo Technology is a new energy intelligent construction machinery company providing large new energy intelligent engineering equipment products and transportation services to global mining customers. Its main products are large new energy intelligent mining trucks suitable for non-road closed transportation scenarios including mines, ports, and major construction projects.

BlueRun's Take: BlueRun has long been bullish on the electrification transformation of commercial vehicles and construction machinery, particularly in mining scenarios where demands for safety and automation are clearly rising. Through strong forward-design capabilities, the Yimoo team successfully developed and validated large intelligent electric mining equipment within just a year and a half, while also achieving remarkably rapid commercial progress. As Yimoo's angel round investor, BlueRun fully expects and believes the team will seize market opportunities and build Yimoo into a leading engineering equipment enterprise in the electrification era.

Digital Energy Storage Core Equipment Manufacturer

Yunchu New Energy closes over 100 million RMB Pre-A+ round

BlueRun Ventures led its Pre-A round

Company Profile: Yunchu New Energy positions itself as a core equipment manufacturer for digital energy storage in the energy internet era and a vertical industry solutions provider. With internationally leading proprietary digital energy storage core technology, its dynamic reconfigurable battery network-based digital energy exchange system realizes a design philosophy of accommodating and managing battery heterogeneity, disrupting the fixed series-parallel battery application paradigm that has persisted for over 200 years since battery invention, and fundamentally solving the "weakest link" problem — a world-class challenge in battery systems.

Innovative Medical Technology Growth Enterprise

Sinorythm closes tens of millions of RMB Series A

BlueRun Ventures led its Pre-A round

Company Profile: Sinorythm is an innovative medical technology growth enterprise founded through the commercialization of research achievements from the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Based on neuroscience frontier research that won the National Science and Technology Progress Award, the company brings together industry-university-research integrated medical-engineering cross-disciplinary R&D capabilities to provide intelligent technology solutions covering screening, diagnosis, treatment, and research for neurological diseases across all scenarios.

Artificial Intelligence Company

Xinchen AI closes Pre-A round

BlueRun Ventures led its angel round

Company Profile: Founded in July 2021, Xinchen AI focuses on large model research and applications. Founder Zhenzhong Lan joined Westlake University in 2020 as head of the Deep Learning Lab and PhD advisor, previously serving as a research scientist at Google and as first author of the lightweight large model ALBERT. Leveraging the team's research and industry experience in algorithms, engineering, and product, the company has built a model layer — middleware layer — application layer product architecture with deep expertise in multimodal technology.

BlueRun's Take: Xinchen AI has established solid foundations in language large model R&D, commercial product exploration, and research talent储备, with exploratory布局 spanning the model layer, middleware layer, and application layer. Founder Zhenzhong Lan's distinguished background bridging academia and industry, both domestically and internationally, gives Xinchen AI a technical positioning oriented toward multimodal large models and AGI from its inception. As Xinchen AI's angel round lead investor, BlueRun believes the company can break through in this wave of AI.

Ultra-Low Altitude · Integrated Air-Ground Operator

CloudSail Intelligence closes Series C+

BlueRun Ventures led Series A and participated in Series B and B+

Company Profile: Founded in 2017, CloudSail Intelligence is an AI-centric company using 4D real-scene mapping, industrial drones, fully automated airports, ground robots, and IoT cloud platforms as carriers, integrating multi-source sensors to provide industry users with "aircraft-network-cloud" integrated system solutions, and delivering air-ground linked 4D holographic management platforms for power, oil & gas, emergency rescue, smart cities, and other domains. It is a national-level "Little Giant" specialized and sophisticated enterprise.

AI-Powered Network Attack-Defense Security Service Provider

Moyun Technology closes new strategic investment

BlueRun Ventures led Series A and made multiple follow-on investments

Company Profile: Founded in 2017, Moyun Technology is a global leader in AI-powered network attack-defense security services, proactively validating users' security defense postures through active attack simulation to strengthen defense through offense. Moyun is also the only domestic vendor with full-chain automated security validation coverage from external networks to defense systems, from defense systems to internal networks, from internal networks to operating systems, from operating systems to files, and from files to functions. It currently operates R&D centers and branches in 10 locations including Beijing, Shanghai, and Silicon Valley.

BlueRun's Take: The global cybersecurity environment has grown increasingly complex in recent years, with frequent cyber conflicts posing major challenges to national cybersecurity. China's cybersecurity industry is experiencing rapid growth with enormous market potential. Moyun has built an advanced AI-attack-defense integrated technology and product system, pioneering China's first autonomous controllable virtual hacker robot that disrupts traditional security protection models. It is the first intelligent attack-defense product combining artificial intelligence algorithms with network attack-defense technology, with internationally leading technology. Moyun has solved numerous technical challenges in cyber attack-defense, filling years of gaps in China's cybersecurity intelligent attack-defense domain and driving innovation and upgrading in China's information security industry.

▶ More Content ◀

BlueRun Ventures was founded 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 over 15 billion RMB in assets under management, making it one of the largest early-stage funds domestically. It invests primarily at Pre-A and Series A stages across hard tech and innovative interaction, enterprise technology, new consumption, and healthcare, with over 150 portfolio companies including Li Auto, Waterdrop, QingCloud, Guazi, Qudian, Songguo Mobility, Ganji.com, Energy Monster, Yuntu Semiconductor, Machenike, CloudSail Intelligence, Anxin Wangdun, and BioMap.

BlueRun Ventures has been ranked #1 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 VC Fund Managers for Sustained High Returns.

Additionally, BlueRun Ventures has received consecutive recognition from Forbes China, 36Kr, Cyzone, Caixin Media, CBNweekly, Jiemian, and other media as "China Early-Stage Firm of the Year," "China Top-Tier Venture Capital Institution," "Most Entrepreneur-Friendly Early-Stage Firm of the Year," and "Most Influential Early-Stage Firm of the Year."