BlueRun Ventures Continues to Bet on Edge Cloud as PPIO Closes 250 Million RMB Series A | BlueRun Ventures
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Recently, edge cloud service provider PPIO announced the completion of its Series A funding round, raising nearly RMB 250 million from Panlin Capital, CCV (China Creation Ventures), Shanghai Zhangjiang Science & Technology Venture Capital Co., Ltd, and IMO Ventures. Existing shareholders including BlueRun Ventures continued to increase their stakes.
Previously, BlueRun Ventures had invested in PPIO's angel round and led its Pre-A round in 2021, which exceeded RMB 100 million. To date, PPIO's cumulative funding has surpassed RMB 400 million, placing it among the top edge cloud vendors.
Jui Chan, Managing Partner of BlueRun Ventures, stated: "As an early investor in PPIO, we have always believed that next-generation applications and living scenarios — such as cloud gaming, AR/VR, spatial digitization, and the metaverse — will only become truly viable and gain consumer acceptance when low-latency infrastructure matures. Founder Yao Xin and the PPIO team have deep expertise in edge computing and distributed cloud computing services, with profound insight and foresight into future interactive applications and service scenarios. BlueRun deeply believes in and will continue to support PPIO as it becomes an industry leader, exporting high-quality edge cloud technology and products globally to better serve the broad application scenarios between people, between people and machines, and between machines and machines — using technology to improve lives and make the world a better place."
01. Cloud Computing's Paradigm Shift from "Centralized" to "Decentralized"
Founded in 2018 by Yao Xin, former founder of PPTV, and co-founder Wenyu Wang, PPIO provides edge cloud computing services and solutions that meet the demands for low latency, high bandwidth, and massive distributed data processing.
According to iResearch estimates, China's IoT connections will grow from 5.5 billion in 2019 to 14.8 billion in 2023, representing a compound annual growth rate of 28.1%.
IDC predicts that by 2025, China will generate 48.6 zettabytes of data annually.
"The proportion of data storage shifting from the center to the terminal side has increased significantly and will continue to rise. Terminal devices and their application scenarios are placing new demands on low latency and bandwidth. Edge computing, being closer to devices and users, can better support real-time, short-cycle data analysis and enable timely local business processing," said PPIO founder Yao Xin.
"There are many application scenarios where uploading data to a central cloud before making decisions and interacting is simply unacceptable. For example, in autonomous driving, a braking distance of 100 km must not exceed 30 cm, meaning the system's overall response time cannot exceed 10 milliseconds. Yet traditional cloud computing latency is at least 100 milliseconds — completely unsuitable for this scenario."
"In next-generation human-computer interaction, video processing and transmission latency is gradually evolving toward millisecond-level ultra-low latency standards. For instance, in cloud VR, each frame must be processed at millisecond speeds to deliver a smooth, non-dizzying user experience."
02. Edge Cloud Is One of the Most Important Variables in Cloud Computing 2.0
In connected vehicles, smart cities, spatial digitization, and AR/VR-based living and working scenarios, the variety and quantity of terminal devices will grow dramatically. These interfaces and devices will generate even larger volumes of data in real time.
It is particularly worth noting that future interaction will extend far beyond the person-to-person and person-to-machine interactions we know today, encompassing massive machine-to-machine and even cluster-level interactions.
Regarding the development trend of Cloud Computing 2.0, Yao Xin noted that current central cloud-dominant computing infrastructure carries high construction costs and high user costs. If computing power needs to be scaled to meet emerging scenario demands, continuously expanding on existing central cloud construction standards would further drive up costs.
Moreover, increased investment alone cannot solve the problem — the centralized cloud computing model itself still cannot satisfy ultra-low latency scenario requirements.
Yao Xin explained: "Central cloud remains essential. However, 'decentralized' cloud services represented by edge cloud will coexist alongside and complement various central cloud services — private, public, and hybrid. When application scenario saturation reaches a certain level, we may see a convergence where the center becomes the edge and the edge becomes the center. At that point, our computing services will be as accessible as today's utilities — water, electricity, gas, and coal."
"Additionally, from a technical perspective, edge cloud differs from central cloud in infrastructure standards, cloud service technology architecture, and development strategies. Without the burden of legacy cloud architecture, startups can build new systems directly on edge-native architectures, more easily adapting to fragmented, non-standard, heterogeneous edge-side infrastructure — opening access to a much larger market," added co-founder Wenyu Wang.
03. Massive Edge Nodes Serving Rigid Low-Latency Demands
Currently, PPIO's edge cloud solutions have helped customers achieve computing power下沉 (downward shift) from central cloud to the edge across more than 1,000 counties and regions in over 30 provinces nationwide.
After PPIO customers begin using the service and join edge nodes, data transmission paths can extend beyond the traditional terminal-to-central-cloud route. Data can first be preprocessed at the edge layer, with the option to return to central cloud only if needed.
Through cloud-edge collaboration, functions like video live streaming bullet comments, encoding/decoding, and special effects rendering can all be handled at the edge — faster and more cost-effectively.
According to PPIO, its current customer base consists primarily of internet companies with demands for low-latency transmission and large-scale cost control, such as long- and short-video platforms, live streaming platforms, and smartphone manufacturers, for whom PPIO provides audio/video, cloud security, and application performance management solutions. Additionally, multiple internet giants, tier-one cloud service providers, and unicorn-level startups have established business partnerships with PPIO in the edge cloud domain.
Following this funding round, PPIO will further increase investment in proprietary technology and edge-side infrastructure, while deepening exploration in ultra-low latency live streaming, cloud gaming, cloud rendering, connected vehicles, spatial digitization, and other scenarios where ultra-low latency improvements are critical.
Further Reading
BlueRun Ventures Completes New RMB 5.5 Billion Dual-Currency Fund Raise
BlueRun April Report | Growing and Resilient Amid Uncertainty
BlueRun Ventures Quarterly Investment Overview | 2022 Q1
BlueRun Ventures was established in Silicon Valley in 1998. BlueRun Ventures China was founded in 2005 and is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage startups.
Currently, BlueRun Ventures manages multiple USD and RMB dual-currency funds in China, with assets under management exceeding RMB 15 billion. Its investment stage focuses on Pre-A and Series A rounds, covering hard technology and innovative interaction, enterprise technology, new consumption, and healthcare. It has cumulatively invested in over 150 startups, including Li Auto, Waterdrop, QingCloud, Guazi (used cars), Qudian, Songguo Mobility, Ganji.com, Energy Monster, Yuntu Semiconductor, Machenike, Cloud Saint Intelligence, Anxin Network Shield, and BioMap.
BlueRun Ventures has been ranked #1 on Zero2IPO's "China Early-Stage Investment Institutions Top 30" 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 been recognized for multiple consecutive years by Forbes China, 36Kr, Cyzone, Caixin Media, CBNweekly, Jiemian, and other media organizations as "China's Best Early-Stage Firm of the Year," "China's Top Venture Capital Firm," "Most Entrepreneur-Friendly Early-Stage Firm of the Year," and "Most Influential Early-Stage Firm of the Year."