Blue Emergence raises tens of millions of RMB in angel+ round co-led by Qiming Venture Partners
Ocean-tech consumer products company
Ocean-tech consumer products company Blue Surge has completed a tens-of-millions-of-yuan angel+ funding round, co-led by Qiming Venture Partners, bringing its total raised to over RMB 50 million. The new capital will primarily go toward R&D iteration of its core product and building out market and sales channels following launch.
Founded in 2024, Blue Surge's first product is an electric-assisted fishing reel for sea angling, currently in user beta testing.
Compared to mature markets in North America, Japan, and Europe, sea fishing in China remains at a stage of gradually growing participation and consumer demand — but globally it represents substantial market scale. The United Nations' Third World Ocean Assessment estimates that roughly 300 million people worldwide engage in recreational fishing annually, with approximately 121 million participating in marine recreational fishing and related yearly spending of at least $47 billion.
Blue Surge founder and CEO Sair Wu sees marine application scenarios as technically demanding and enormously challenging, yet offering exceptionally high commercial ceilings and ecological carrying capacity. Once past the threshold of scale, marine environments can accommodate far greater user volumes than land-based scenarios, he believes.
For its exploration of marine applications, Blue Surge chose to enter through the electric-assisted fishing reel. Reels are a well-established product category, though Wu argues that traditional offerings have focused mainly on mechanical transmission and precision manufacturing — whereas now, robotics technology can be fully leveraged to advance motor, electronic control, and data capabilities.
The reel manages line release, retrieval, and tension control, serving as the core equipment in the direct contest between angler and fish. In its product design, Blue Surge isn't building a machine to fish on the user's behalf, but rather augmenting human endurance at sea and countering the fatigue from environmental unpredictability and battling large fish. Electric assistance intervenes in physically taxing moments while preserving judgment, manipulation, and the fight itself.
"The electric-assisted reel addresses two user types: beginners get a smoother learning curve; experienced anglers gain data recording and review capabilities that no previous reel has offered," Wu said. Across the full fishing journey, the product incorporates gamified interactions and logging features, aiming to turn each outing into a revisitable, shareable story.
Realizing this product vision requires the Blue Surge team to complete a series of scenario-specific adaptations, bringing robotics technologies down to the reel form factor.
The first challenge is space. The reel must be held in hand for extended periods, with volume and weight that don't deviate noticeably from familiar product forms — while still housing motors, electronic controls, transmission, and power systems, all operating in high-humidity, high-salinity marine environments.
The second challenge is intensive human-machine interaction. Traditional robotics typically emphasizes machine-to-machine control, whereas the reel maintains a direct, hours-long physical connection with the human hand. Human tactile sensitivity is acute; subtle issues in motor output, torque variation, and control response directly impact user experience.
The flexibility of fishing line further increases control difficulty. The team must address foundational robotics problems including motor stability, torque amplification, reducer design, and repeat positioning accuracy — while also handling the uncertainty of flexible line under force and motion.
"We haven't pursued technology for technology's sake," Wu told Hard Kr. The team started from genuine pain points experienced by themselves and fellow anglers, concentrating resources on the elements affecting control, interaction, and ease of use.
To address the specific but real pain point of threading line through the line guide, Blue Surge designed a dedicated structure, iterating through more than ten versions; the right-side ergonomic structure underwent roughly a year of refinement to balance operational convenience with reliable performance.
Beyond the reel, Blue Surge views AI as its long-term capability for entering the marine space. Sea fishing involves numerous decisions: when to depart, target species, weather changes, bait preparation, spot selection. Finding fish schools relies not on sonar alone, but on synthesizing topography, meteorology, fleet information, and angler experience. Blue Surge hopes to eventually leverage AI to organize this information and assist users in trip planning.
Wu noted that Blue Surge is currently exploring on general large-model platforms, and may incorporate smaller-scale professional datasets in the future, though the specific technical path remains immature. Marine environments are influenced by weather, currents, and waves; existing data is insufficient and model predictive capability remains limited.
On the team side, Wu previously served as partner at Direct Drive Tech, with long-term experience in motor-related work. Blue Surge's core members primarily have backgrounds from DJI's RoboMaster competition and the broader robotics industry, with some members bringing U.S. market experience. Fishing is a shared team passion. Over the past two years, the team has focused mainly on developing and beta testing its debut reel.
CEO Interview
Q: Many sea anglers enjoy the process of fighting big fish. Won't adding electric assistance diminish the pleasure of fishing?
Wu: When you're actually fighting a big fish, even very experienced anglers need the captain and crew to coordinate — sometimes you even have to chase the fish with the boat. It's inherently a team sport, not a pure contest of strength between human and fish. When the fish surges, you're competing on endurance; when it tires, you're competing on explosive power. The whole process is highly rhythmic and strategic. We're not catching the fish for the user. We want to give more people a smooth learning curve, while adding new possibilities for experienced users. The machine augments human capability, but judgment and the story still belong to the user.
**Q: The company's vision for ocean technology is ambitious. Why start with just one reel?
Wu: Our vision is actually quite simple: we want going sea fishing to become something you can decide to do on a whim, without heavy burden, accessible to everyone. Very few people have actually experienced sea fishing today, but I think it's worth doing at least once in your life — even seasickness is worth it.
We'd certainly like to close the experience loop across the entire industry, and hope to work with partners to address pain points like unstable weather prediction and seasickness. But for now, we're starting from one entry point and taking it step by step.
This round was co-led by Hillhouse and Qiming Venture Partners, with Yunmu Capital participating, and continued investment from existing investors including angel investor Bingqiang Gao, MiraclePlus, and Pine VC co-founders.
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Founded in 2006, Qiming Venture Partners currently manages 11 USD funds and 7 RMB funds, with total assets under management reaching $9.5 billion. Since inception, the firm has focused on investing in early and growth-stage outstanding enterprises in Technology and Healthcare innovation.
To date, Qiming Venture Partners has invested in over 580 high-growth innovative companies, of which more than 210 have listed on the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited, Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, or exited through M&A and other means. Over 80 portfolio companies have become recognized unicorns or super-unicorns.
Many Qiming Venture Partners portfolio companies have grown into the most influential firms in their respective fields, including Xiaomi (01810.HK), Meituan (03690.HK), Bilibili (NASDAQ:BILI, 09626.HK), Zhihu (NYSE:ZH, 02390.HK), Roborock (688169.SH), Hesai Technology (NASDAQ:HSAI, 02525.HK), UBTECH (09880.HK), WeRide (NASDAQ:WRD, 00800.HK), HyperStrong (688411.SH), Insta360 (688775.SH), Unisound (09678.HK), Biren Technology (06082.HK), Zhipu (02513.HK), Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals (603087.SH), Tigermed (300347.SZ, 03347.HK), Zai Lab (NASDAQ:ZLAB, 09688.HK), CanSino Biologics (688185.SH, 06185.HK), Schrödinger (NASDAQ:SDGR), MicroPort EP MedTech (688617.SH), Sanyou Medical (688085.SH), Amoy Diagnostics (300685.SZ), GenScript ProBio (688520.SH), Insilico Medicine (03696.HK), Hope Medicine, Yuanxin Technology, MediLink Therapeutics, LaNova Medicines, StepFun, and others.