HeyWhale

HeyWhale (和鲸科技) is a Chinese data-science collaboration platform founded by CEO Fan Xiangwei, backed in its angel round by Linear Capital . The company traces its origins to Kesci (科赛网), which starting in 2016 ran algorithm competitions for firms like PPDai, Ctrip and Baidu and saw firsthand how poorly algorithm projects were managed—tools were fragmented, models went unused, and "the chain had astonishing waste" . Fan described the early tooling environment as "scientists driving tractors" .

HeyWhale's bet was to combine two trends—open-source data tools and collaborative development à la GitLab/GitHub—into what Fan called "GitLab & GitHub for Data Science" . Its go-to-market followed a "three-stage rocket": building community and competition traction first, then selling to universities and research institutes, and finally moving into government and mainstream enterprises . By 2020 it had won a competitive bid at a national ministry after clients "compared almost every domestic supplier" . As of a 2022 Linear Capital profile, Fan estimated data-science business adoption was still at roughly "5% progress" and considered collaborative complexity "an order of magnitude higher than software-engineering collaboration" .