The Best Time of Spring | February & March Bi-Monthly Report
Though it goes unnoticed, new life is already quietly taking root.
Early spring is the best time of year. Winter seems reluctant to leave — icicles still cling to eaves in the north. But after each spring rain, almost imperceptibly, new life begins to stir. This bimonthly period, we climbed Fragrant Hills and saw spring drawing nearer; the explorers in the BlueRun Ventures family also notched many hard-won breakthroughs. May you gather your spirits and welcome the season.
TCab Tech
Closed $20 Million Series A Strategic Round
A renowned overseas investment institution made an exclusive strategic investment in TCab Tech, with plans to develop "air taxi" application scenarios in the Middle East. TCab Tech is the first Chinese company to develop manned tiltrotor eVTOL aircraft, achieving the maiden flight of its prototype in 2023 and filling a technological gap in China in this direction. BlueRun Ventures was an investor in TCab Tech's seed round and added to its position in subsequent rounds.
YTMicro
Closed Hundreds of Millions of RMB in Series B2 Funding
YTMicro completed two rounds of financing worth hundreds of millions of RMB within a single year. To date, YTMicro's product line fully covers all five major vehicle domains: body, chassis, powertrain, cockpit, and autonomous driving. The past year marked YTMicro's full commercialization, with hundreds of customers covering mainstream domestic OEMs and over 500 designated projects. BlueRun Ventures led YTMicro's angel round and continued to add to its position in subsequent rounds.
Li Auto Becomes China's First New Force Automaker with Annual Revenue Exceeding 100 Billion RMB
With the release of its Q4 and full-year 2023 financial results, Li Auto officially became the first new force automaker in China to surpass 100 billion RMB in annual revenue. Q4 revenue reached 41.73 billion RMB, up 136.4% year-over-year; quarterly deliveries totaled 131,805 vehicles, with a 16% market share in the above-200,000-RMB new energy segment — ranking first among Chinese automotive brands. Full-year revenue hit 123.85 billion RMB, up 173.5%; annual deliveries reached 376,030 vehicles, up 182.2%. It took Li Auto eight years to achieve 100 billion RMB in revenue and 10 billion RMB in profit — a milestone in the growth story of Chinese automotive brands.
Moonshot AI's Kimi Intelligent Assistant Launches 2-Million-Character Lossless Context Window Beta
In less than six months, Kimi Intelligent Assistant has achieved another breakthrough in long-context window technology, increasing its lossless context length by an order of magnitude to 2 million characters. We believe this quantitative leap in lossless context length for large models will further expand the imagination space for AI application scenarios — including complete code repository analysis and understanding, autonomous agentic systems capable of completing multi-step complex tasks for humans, lifelong assistants that never forget critical information, and truly unified multimodal architectures, among others.
Energy Singularity Completes Assembly of World's First High-Temperature Superconducting Tokamak
In March, CCTV's Xinwen Lianbo reported on Energy Singularity's Honghuang-70 high-temperature superconducting tokamak. The completion of this device's assembly marks the end of its construction phase. It is both the world's first high-temperature superconducting tokamak and the first fully superconducting tokamak developed and built by a commercial company.
Luchen Tech Open-Sources Sora Replication Architecture and Releases Python+PyTorch+HuggingFace Grok-1
Colossal-AI open-sourced the complete Sora replication architecture solution Open-Sora, which can reduce replication costs by 46% and extend model training input sequence length to 819K patches. Simultaneously, it provided an easy-to-use Python+PyTorch+HuggingFace Grok-1 implementation, accelerating inference latency by nearly 4x. The model is now available on HuggingFace and ModelScope.
PPIO Launches Paio Compute Cloud
PPIO's product Paio Compute Cloud has officially launched, built upon PPIO's accumulated capabilities in distributed computing. It provides customers with extensive compute supply, diverse GPU models, extreme performance optimization, and efficient operations — delivering cost-effective compute services for next-generation generative AI, cloud rendering, machine learning, and accelerated computing scenarios.
Youibot Releases Omnidirectional Chassis P300X
The P200 family gains a new member: the P300X. With omnidirectional precision movement, it efficiently navigates complex factory layouts; dual live hot-swappable batteries enable zero downtime and zero charging, maximizing robot availability.
Nuclei System Technology Unveils Multiple Innovations
In February, Nuclei System Technology officially released its new ultra-low-power embedded RISC-V processor CPU IP — the N100 series core, targeting MCU, low-power controllers, power management, intelligent control, and connectivity/communication applications. It also launched its first dedicated processor product line for artificial intelligence applications, Nuclei Intelligence (NI) series, and the NI series' first AI-dedicated RISC-V processor CPU IP — the NI900 series core. In March, Nuclei System Technology released the NS100 series core, an ultra-low-power embedded RISC-V processor CPU IP for information security, primarily targeting information security applications under ultra-low-power constraints. This NS100 release completes the full NS series puzzle for Nuclei System Technology.
Garen Semiconductor Successfully Develops 6-Inch Casting Method Gallium Oxide Single Crystal
Garen Semiconductor, in collaboration with Zhejiang University Hangzhou International Science and Technology Innovation Center's Advanced Semiconductor Research Institute and the State Key Laboratory of Silicon and Advanced Semiconductor Materials, successfully prepared high-quality 6-inch unintentionally doped and conductive gallium oxide (β-Ga₂O₃) single crystals using its independently developed casting method. It also processed 6-inch gallium oxide substrates, becoming the first Chinese industrial company to master 6-inch gallium oxide single crystal substrate preparation technology.
RaymoTech Launches 3D-Printed Die Casting Mold Material Anco T
RaymoTech introduced Anco-T, a next-generation 3D-printed hot work die steel independently developed for the die casting industry. Anco-T features high toughness, high temper resistance, high resistance to surface heat checking, high resistance to aluminum melt loss, high fatigue resistance, high corrosion resistance, and high wear resistance. Compared to traditional 3D printing materials and die casting mold steels, Anco-T addresses performance deficiencies and significantly extends die casting mold service life.
Zero Gravity Subsidiary Secures 22 Confirmed Orders for RX1E-A Electric Fixed-Wing Aircraft
Ruien Aircraft Industry (Zhejiang) Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Zero Gravity Aircraft Industry, signed orders totaling 22 RX1E-A electric fixed-wing aircraft with multiple domestic general aviation operators. The partnering companies in this agreement include Sichuan Longhao Hongshi General Aviation Co., Ltd. ("Hongshi Aviation"), Gansu Yellow River General Aviation Co., Ltd., Anhui Yuchen General Aviation Co., Ltd., and Zhejiang Dehang General Aviation Co., Ltd., among others.
Gaussian Scrubber 50 M Series Receives TÜV Rheinland EU CE-MD Machinery Directive Compliance Certificate
This is the first CE-MD compliance certificate for commercial cleaning robots issued by TÜV Rheinland based on EN IEC 63327 and relevant product standards, indicating that this product has passed TÜV Rheinland's rigorous testing and meets EU safety standard requirements.
Mushiny Robotics Releases Plug-and-Play Solution
"Mushiny Commander" can be applied to indoor and outdoor cross-floor, cross-zone scenarios. With a single tablet, one person can lead 10 forklifts and manage 10,000 storage locations, handling goods inbound, transfer, and outbound — multiplying human efficiency several times over. This solution deploys in under 3 hours and goes live within a day; payback period is one year, with storage density improved by 50%.
WhaleOps Reaches Multiple Partnerships
WhaleOps and Kingbase completed product compatibility testing — KingbaseES V8, V9 and WhaleStudio suite have successfully completed in-depth compatibility testing, and WhaleOps received a certification certificate specially granted by Kingbase. Meanwhile, its flagship product WhaleStudio suite has also completed in-depth compatibility certification with IvorySQL database management system V3.0 from HighGo Software Co., Ltd. ("HighGo Software").
Boray Data Selected as Beijing Digital Economy Benchmark Enterprise
On February 29, the Beijing Digital Economy Benchmark Enterprise Evaluation Results Conference was held in Beijing, releasing the 2023 Beijing Digital Economy Benchmark Enterprise Evaluation Report and recognizing a group of benchmark enterprises that are leading Beijing's digital economy industrial clusters and beginning to demonstrate global influence. Boray Data was successfully selected as a Beijing Digital Economy Benchmark Enterprise, receiving the "Digital Infrastructure Technology Benchmark Enterprise" designation.
Botree Cycling Participates in Writing World's First Carbon Footprint Guide for Lithium Industry
In March, Botree Cycling was invited by the International Lithium Association (ILiA) Sustainable Lithium Committee (SLS) to participate in writing and reviewing the world's first product carbon footprint (PCF) guide for the lithium industry — Determining the Product Carbon Footprint of Lithium Products. In February, the International Energy Agency (IEA) held a high-level workshop at its Paris headquarters (IEA Battery Special Report High-Level Workshop) for in-depth discussion on the role of batteries in the energy transition consensus reached at COP28. Botree Cycling was one of three invited Chinese companies.
Tian Cheng Technology Participates in National Key R&D Program for Active Health and Aging Response
Recently, Tian Cheng Technology participated in the National Key R&D Program "Active Health and Aging Technology Response" key special project 2023 annual "Research on Evaluation and Personalized Intervention Frontier Technology for Common Motor and Cognitive Impairments in Chinese Elderly." Tian Cheng Technology will subsequently participate in R&D for two sub-projects: classification and grading systems and evaluation key technologies, and personalized active rehabilitation intervention devices.
Past Content Review
Founded in Silicon Valley, BlueRun Ventures was established in 2005 as 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 15 billion RMB, making it one of the largest early-stage funds domestically. It invests primarily at Pre-A and Series A stages, covering technology, consumer, and healthcare sectors, with nearly 200 portfolio companies including Li Auto, Waterdrop, QingCloud, Guazi.com, Qudian, Ganji.com, Energy Monster, Gaussian Robotics, Songguo Mobility, YTMicro, Machenike, CloudSino Intelligence, AnchNet, BioMap, and others.
BlueRun Ventures has been ranked #1 on Zero2IPO's "China Top 30 Early-Stage Investment Institutions" and ChinaVenture's "China Best Early-Stage Venture Capital Institutions TOP30," and was named to Preqin's Top 10 Global VC Fund Managers for Sustained High Returns.
Additionally, BlueRun Ventures has repeatedly 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 Entrepreneur-Friendly Early-Stage Institution of the Year," and "Most Influential Early-Stage Institution of the Year."