Kai Yu
余凯
Kai Yu is the founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics (地平线), the autonomous-driving and robotics chip company he started in 2015 after leaving Baidu . An AI scientist by training — born in 1976, educated at Nanjing University and the University of Munich, with 100+ papers from stints across Siemens, NEC Labs, and then Baidu, which he joined in 2012 to lead AI R&D — he took Horizon public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2024, where it has since passed a hundred-billion HKD market cap . Linear Capital's Harry Wang was the first investor he approached, and 5Y Capital led the angel round — Kai Yu has called 5Y "our most important shareholder and closest partner" . His operating philosophy, as he put it in a 2026 fireside chat with Wang, is that "living long matters more than living flashy" — he cites Buffett, Munger, and Duan Yongping as idols, treating entrepreneurship itself as a form of investment . ZhenFund's account of the IPO highlights his risk-averse streak: after raising ~$800M, he raised another ~$800M at a flat valuation ahead of a market downturn, a cushion that let Horizon keep building while peers with inflated valuations struggled .
AI-generated — may contain errors, please verify.
Coverage
Selling Shovels in the Gold Rush, D-Robotics Aims to Become the "NVIDIA of Embodied AI" | Unity Ventures Portfolio
The "Intelligent Foundation" Behind Robots
2026 MaHui | Source Code Capital's Zhang Xun: Growth Beyond Exponential — A Game With Fewer and Fewer Winners
The AI era has given us the longest slope and the wettest snow. Only one question remains — do we have the patience to keep rolling the snowball all the way down?
"Octopus Power" Closes Nearly $50 Million Series A, Co-Led by Linear Capital and Others | Linear Portfolio
Building a sustainable, self-evolving embodied-intelligent productive force.
A Conversation with Horizon Robotics' Kai Yu: Buffett and Munger Are My Absolute Idols; Entrepreneurship Is Fundamentally a Form of Investment | Linear Talk
Longevity matters more than flashiness.
"Boundless Dynamics" Closes 300 Million Yuan Series A, Co-Led by HSG and Linear Capital | Linear Portfolio
Focus on the R&D and iteration of foundation models driven by high-value scenarios.
Linear Capital's 2025 Investor Conference Successfully Held in Beijing | Linear News
To be or not to be, in the AI-dominated future.
Light Always Finds Its Next Landing Point｜Z News
We look back on the "highlight moments" of the past October and invite you to witness the growth of our portfolio companies and what's new at ZhenFund.
Linear Capital's 11th Anniversary: A Frontier Tech Fund's Retrospective and Future Journey
Our core investment philosophy is to see technical founders as ourselves.
Compile Uncertainty into Answers | 5Y News Monthly
The big news from last month.
Ten Years of Entrepreneurship: The Stories of People Coming and Going in Kai Yu's Eyes at Horizon Robotics | Linear Voice
The only way to change the script is to change yourself.
From Horizon Robotics to D-Robotics: How It Aims to Become the 'Wintel' of the Robotics Industry | Unity Ventures Portfolio
Finding Breakthroughs Where No One Else Competes
January: Arriving at the Realm of Infinity | 5Y News Monthly
The big news from last month.
China's USD Funds Won't Disappear
Live long enough to long China.
Interview: Tsinghua's Zhao Mingguo on Two Decades of Humanoid Robot Research, From Lone Pioneer to a Crowded Field
A scholar's near-obsessive dedication to their research career
Seeking Entrepreneurs for the Era of Tech Innovation 2.0 | 2024 5Y Capital USD Fund Partner Meeting Recap
They don't just have cross-disciplinary technical integration capabilities — they also bring a global perspective.
10 Facts About 1,000 Chinese Billionaires
The currents of the era, all contained within the sequence.
Horizon Robotics Goes Public: We Can Finally Talk About Kai Yu's Story | Z Talk
How can a risk-averse entrepreneur pull off something incredibly risky?
Linear Capital held its annual USD investor conference, while its angel-round portfolio company Horizon Robotics listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Playing with Fire
Who Is Horizon Robotics' Most Important Investor?
Got it?
Congratulations to Horizon Robotics! The "crazy" one, now believed in | 5Y News
Congratulations to Horizon Robotics on its successful listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Nobel Prizes "Riding the AI Wave"? What Did They Actually Do to Deserve It? | Yunqi Capital Tech π
Everyone's trying to understand the nature of the world.
Exclusive | Kathy Xu says she hasn't exited primary markets, and just invested in an AI company
The facts may not matter; what matters is the signal.
Sorry, BlueRun Ventures Doesn't Want That Kind of Startup Camp | Buming 2024 Now Recruiting
You're Invited to Join a Different Kind of Startup Camp
Action Is the Simplest Method | 5Y News Monthly
The big news from last month.
Kai Yu, Horizon Robotics: The Scientist-Founder Journey from Zero to One | 5Y View
"Be roughly right, not precisely wrong."
Networking Sessions, Forums, and New Product Launches — Multiple Linear Capital Portfolio Companies Take the Stage at WAIC
Last week, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) took place in Shanghai. Can Zheng, Director at Linear Capital, served as a judge at the "ModelScope Create@AI Hackathon," hosted by AI model community ModelScope, guided by the CCF Open Source Development Committee, co-organized by Alibaba Cloud and NVIDIA, and supported by Alibaba Cloud Tianchi. For details on the three-day competition, [click here](https://mp.
Multiple founders from Linear Capital's portfolio companies have been selected for 36Kr's "2023 Sci-Tech Innovators" list.
Last week, 36Kr released its "2023 Sci-Tech Innovators" list. In its introduction, 36Kr highlighted the opportunities and divides it discovered through interviews and research on scientist entrepreneurship: "After two months of open nominations, we still found a group of innovators willing to stay in the arena and attempt to bridge that divide. As representatives of technological innovation grown from Chinese soil, their existence continues to point toward the many possibilities of translating research into commerce." Among them, WeiJian Technology, a portfolio company of Linear Capital,
Code Brain | The Hidden AI Talent Arms Race Behind Deep Learning's Decade-Long Rise
A team of professionals with unwavering conviction will ultimately become hotly contested talent that companies fight over.
Finding True Non-Consensus: Time as a Moat | 5Y Capital Partner Meeting Recap
Focus only on things that are absolutely meaningful.
Wire News | Horizon Robotics Releases China's First Software-Hardware Integrated Robotics Development Platform to Build a Thriving Robotics Ecosystem
On June 14, 2022, **Horizon Robotics, a global leader in edge AI computing platforms, held the "Hello Hobot" online launch event for its Horizon Hobot Platform, unveiling China's first integrated hardware-software, open and easy-to-use robotics development platform.** Addressing key pain points in robotics development, it provides developers with a complete toolkit spanning underlying compute, development tools, and algorithm case studies.
Xinhuazhang Unveils Major Digital Verification EDA Product! Endgame Thinking to Boost Chip Design Efficiency
Xinhuazhang's Wang Libin: Giving the Chip Industry "A Winning Hand, Validation Freedom"
Kai Yu: What Horizon Robotics Has Truly Believed In These Six Years | 5Y Talk
The forces that keep us moving forward.
5Y Talk｜Kai Yu of Horizon Robotics: The "Crazy" You Others Saw, Now Starting to Be Believed
Our hope is to become the Intel of the robotics era — that has been Horizon Robotics' mission from day one.
5Y News｜Horizon Robotics Plans to Raise Over $700 Million in Series C, Completes C1 Tranche
Horizon Robotics announced the completion of its Series C1 funding round, with continued backing from 5Y Capital.
