BlueRun Ventures Closes New Dual-Currency Fund at RMB 3.9 Billion

BlueRun Ventures has recently completed the final close of its fourth dual-currency fund, raising approximately $560 million (around RMB 3.9 billion). This brings the firm's total assets under management to nearly RMB 20 billion, solidifying its position as one of China's largest early-stage fund managers.

Jui Chan, Managing Partner of BlueRun Ventures, commented: "We are grateful for the trust from both our returning and new investors. We have always believed that with sufficient space and support, Chinese tech talent will lead the world in frontier fields like AI. With this new fund in place, BlueRun will continue to make concentrated bets on AI and hard tech, maintaining our discipline and restraint, and standing by China's tech entrepreneurs as we always have. We believe even greater opportunities lie ahead."

Dual-Currency Fund Draws Continued Backing from Long-Term Capital at Home and Abroad

The dual-currency fund received sustained support and recognition from both new and existing LPs.

On the USD fund side, limited partners include globally renowned sovereign wealth funds, insurance institutions, major financial institutions, and established family offices — representing international long-term institutional capital. Geographically, beyond traditional European and American investors, the LP base has expanded to include new regions such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Japan, further enhancing regional diversification.

On the RMB fund side, the new fund went from launch to final close in less than a year, achieving an oversubscribed single-close. The LP roster encompasses national-level funds, core regional government industrial funds, mainstream financial institutions, top-tier marketized fund-of-funds, well-known corporate investors, and family offices. Notably, the majority of existing LPs chose to reinvest — a testament to their confidence in the firm.

Despite strong market demand, BlueRun Ventures maintained its characteristic restraint, proactively controlling the final fund size and opting for a timely close.

Systematic AI Positioning, Catching Leaders at the Earliest Stages

The new fund will continue its early-stage tech investment strategy, with concentrated bets on AI and hard tech. The RMB fund will focus on frontier tech areas aligned with China's industrial policy, while the USD fund will concentrate more on globally competitive Chinese tech startups and AI-themed investments.

As early as the beginning of 2021, BlueRun Ventures began tracking investment opportunities in large language models. After ChatGPT's emergence in 2022, the firm internally concluded that China would inevitably develop its own foundation models, and that AI represented a technological revolution with even deeper impact than mobile internet. BlueRun Ventures subsequently increased its AI investment intensity, maintaining a high pace of deal activity even as the broader industry contracted.

BlueRun Ventures is now one of the very few institutions in China to have invested in leading unicorns at the early stage across all three critical AI domains: foundation models, AI agents, and embodied intelligence.

In embodied intelligence, BlueRun Ventures was the seed-round investor in Galaxy Universal. In early 2023, Managing Partner Jui Chan decided to invest after his first conversation with founder He Wang, and has since continued to back multiple subsequent rounds. BlueRun was drawn to the team's forward-thinking approach to combining "brain and body" and using simulation data to address the scarcity of real-world robotic data. Around the same period, in August 2023, BlueRun Ventures completed its A1-round investment in AgiBot, and has since added four more rounds. The firm believes that under the leadership of Taihua Deng and Zhihui Peng (known as "稚晖君"), the AgiBot team has rapidly evolved from a hardware-focused team to one with integrated brain capabilities, demonstrating exceptional adaptability. Additionally, BlueRun Ventures has also invested in other notable companies in this sector including Tashi Zhihang (TARS), Zhijian Power, Lingchu Intelligence, and Hillbot.

In large language models, BlueRun Ventures participated in Moonshot AI's Series A in 2023. The firm believes that China will certainly have its own foundation models, and that the key differentiator will depend on talent density, compute resources, and data resources — with talent density being the most critical factor at the early stage. Moonshot AI founder Zhilin Yang, one of the most-cited researchers in China's NLP field, was a decisive factor in BlueRun's investment decision, given his technical vision of "building the world's best AI foundation model, not just China's best," and his demonstrated ability to execute on that ambition. Terry Zhu, Managing Partner at BlueRun Ventures, has noted that Yang's passion for and practice toward AGI had already exceeded 10,000 hours before he even started his company — and supporting such dedication is precisely what early-stage investing is meant to do.

In AI applications, as early as January 2024, BlueRun Ventures completed its angel-round investment in Genspark, an AI application company. Founded by former Xiaodu CEO Kun Jing and CTO Kaihua Zhu, the company recently announced reaching $250 million in ARR within 11 months of launch, while simultaneously completing a $385 million Series B extension. BlueRun has also invested in other AI application projects including Vivix, Yuaiweiwu, Daqian Technology, Trooly, as well as enterprise agent companies such as MapleTech and Yuanli Intelligence.

In strategic frontier directions including advanced computing, brain-computer interfaces, and AI4Science, BlueRun Ventures has also made early bets on companies such as BioMap, Zhongqi Wuliang, Taichu Data, and Kaiwu Ji.

Maintaining Early-Stage Conviction, Betting with Discipline

This year marks BlueRun's 20th year of operations in China. Originating from Silicon Valley in 1998, BlueRun Ventures began putting down roots in China in 2005, with Managing Partner Jui Chan building the China team from the ground up. Over two decades, the firm has lived through multiple technology cycles and market fluctuations.

Behind this cross-cycle experience lies a long-standing conviction in the capabilities of Chinese tech talent. Since beginning his VC career in Silicon Valley in 2000, Jui Chan has observed that Chinese tech talent has been systematically undervalued due to cultural and environmental differences. When the AI revolution took off in 2022 and domestic capital market sentiment turned pessimistic, BlueRun Ventures judged that given sufficient space and support, Chinese tech talent was fully capable of leading the world in frontier fields like AI. Based on this conviction, the firm maintained its independent investment rhythm through the industry downturn: not chasing hot trends, but making bold concentrated bets at non-consensus stages; once convinced, persisting through multiple rounds of follow-on investment.

In investment practice, BlueRun Ventures does not worship pedigree or titles, but rather focuses on whether entrepreneurs can deliver genuine productivity gains. The firm seeks mission-driven doers — those with the drive to tackle world-class problems, and the ability to translate technology into results that create real societal benefit. For BlueRun, early-stage investing is about more than commercial value; it is about backing hardcore forces that can genuinely enhance China's future national strength and global competitiveness.

As early as its 2022 annual letter, BlueRun Ventures explicitly stated that its dual-currency strategy must address the profound changes brought by global restructuring, and that top-tier Chinese entrepreneurs, supported by national policy, were encountering a new opportunity to step onto the international stage.

Facing the current AI investment frenzy, BlueRun has further elevated its investment standards and aesthetic, becoming even more selective in deploying capital. The firm believes that investing must be anchored to major trends, and that extreme restraint is required when no clear opportunity exists; maintaining clarity while enjoying technological dividends, and exiting decisively at the right moment. The louder the noise, the greater the need for calm. Standing at the threshold of its second decade, BlueRun Ventures will continue to make concentrated bets on AI, maintaining restraint and composure, walking alongside entrepreneurs who dare to lead, and continuously capturing the opportunities of the next era.

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