Yu Chen
陈昱
Yu Chen is a managing partner at Yunqi Capital, where he's spent over a decade investing across frontier tech — open-source software, big data, robotics, autonomous driving, AI, and embodied intelligence . Before turning to investing, he was a Google engineer and a startup technical lead . His portfolio includes MiniMax — he was among the earliest investors to meet founder Yan Junjie back in 2021 — along with DeepRoute.ai, Neolix, PingCAP, Keenon Robotics, and Independent Variable Robotics . In the 2026 VC promotion cycle he was one of four newly named managing partners industry-wide, alongside ZhenFund's Liu Yuan and GGV's Wu Chenyao and Li Haojun . He remains active in Yunqi's outward-facing tech commentary, recently weighing in on how to separate genuine progress from froth in the embodied intelligence boom .
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Coverage
Talking Embodied Artificial Intelligence with Yu Chen: Embrace the Bubble, but Manufacturing Must Eventually Do the Math | Yunqi Capital Insights X Tencent Technology
The truly slow and expensive variable is data accumulated bit by bit by people in the real world.
Yu Chen on Tech Investing: Beneath the Hype, What Is Long-Term Value? | Yunqi Insights
Finding the Constant in Change
Yunqi Capital WAIC Recap | Four Days That Weren't Enough, and Where AI Is Headed Next
The future belongs to the doers.
Yunqi Pamir: Tracing the Millennium-Old Silk Road | 2026 Southern Xinjiang Outing Notes
Twelve years, and YQ reaches new heights
Yunqi Capital's Chen Yu: When Technology Paradigms Shift, Long-Term Opportunities Never Arrive Linearly | Yunqi Insights
Seeing the Long Term in Variables
Yunqi Capital Portfolio | Seed Round Lead Investment Project *Magic Shape Intelligence* Completes Hundreds of Millions of RMB in Pre-A Funding: Accelerating Construction of "Token Super Factory"
Supplying High-Quality Tokens for the AGI Era
Yunqi Capital Ranks Top 4 in ChinaVenture Honors: Grounded in AI's Core Narrative, Envisioning a New Era of Technology | Yunqi Bulletin
Building a Bright Future Through Technology and Innovation
Yunqi Capital Leads Yitu Technology's A+ Round of Over 100 Million Yuan: AI Rewrites Smart Cockpits | Yunqi Partners
Writing the New Future of AI Cockpits
Yunqi Capital Quarterly Q1 | Keep Moving Forward, Answers Lie Ahead
A Quick Look at Yunqi Capital's Latest
Yunqi Capital Team | New Promotions and New Members: Rooted Downward, Growing Upward
Let's grow and get better together!
After 13 Years, Manycore Tech Clears Hong Kong Stock Exchange Listing Hearing | Qixing Chronicles
Set to become the "world's first publicly traded spatial intelligence company"
2026 VC Promotion Roundup
Universal celebration.
At This Year's Year-End Party, My Colleague Got Upstaged by AI | A Yunqi Capital Holiday Gathering Notes
AI, and each other
Yunqi Capital | Portfolio Company Yitu Technology Secures New Strategic Funding Round After Angel Round, With Yunqi Capital Increasing Its Stake
Accelerating the Growth of an AI-Native Smart Cockpit Leader
Yunqi Capital Invests in Sunseeker's Series B, Accelerating Growth in Outdoor Robotics | Yunqi Capital
Full-Stack In-House R&D, Pioneering a New Future for Outdoor Intelligence
The Fundraising Stories of China's "Six Little Tigers": Six Paths, Six Lives
If Kimi ever goes public, will the bell-ringing photo look very different?
Congratulations to Yunqi Capital portfolio company *MiniMax* on its successful listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange! | Yunqi Capital
Never Stop Moving, Witnessing Growth
MiniMax Goes Public: The $1.5 Billion Fundraising Blitz, 15 Reasons Investors Bet on It, and How Long Each One Lasts
One Year in AI, Five Years on Earth
Moving Forward Together! Chen Yu Promoted to Managing Partner at Yunqi Capital | Yunqi Team
Marching forward side by side, continuing to rise.
At Volcano Engine's startup forum, no one was talking about AGI?
AI entrepreneurs are starting to do the math for real.
Chen Yu in Conversation with Ziwang, DeepRoute: AI in the Physical World — How to Tackle the Toughest Nuts to Crack | Yunqi Capital Doers
Bridging the Chasm from Virtual to Reality
The "Pick-and-Shovel" Play for Spatial Intelligence: Manycore Tech Opens Its Spatial Foundation Layer to All | Yunqi Capital
Being the "Pick-and-Shovel Play" for the Spatial Intelligence Era
Yunqi Capital Quarterly | Upward, the Consistent Answer
New Growth, New Gains
Y Transformers' First Gathering: The Real Questions and Real Ambitions on the Minds of Post-'98 AI Founders | Event Recap
Nobody's in a rush to leave.
Yunqi Capital | Lead Series A investor Neolix raises over $600 million in Series D, with Yunqi Capital continuing to increase its stake
Accompanying the World's Largest L4 RoboVan Supplier in Its Continuous Evolution
Elastic Acquires Yunqi Capital Seed-Backed Jina AI to Jointly Accelerate Search AI Infrastructure Evolution | Yunqi Capital
Driving Open-Source AI Infrastructure Toward a Global Ecosystem
From Bare-Bones Office to Global No. 1: 100,000 Robots and 15 Years on the Brink | Yunqi Capital
Keenon's New Embodied Intelligence Opportunity
Yunqi Capital Bulletin | This Autumn, Charging Forward and Reaping Rewards Along the Way
Thank you for the industry's recognition.
The AI Investment Mid-Game: Talent Wars, Faith Divides, and Super Opportunities
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The Globalization Path of Embodied Intelligence: A Deep Conversation on Value Creation, Innovation, and Organizational Capability
Hard-hitting, practical insights from the front lines of the industry
From Mortgaging His House to Building the World's Largest Autonomous Fleet: Yu Enyuan's Seven-Year All-In Bet | Yunqi Capital Doers
"Neolix" and Its "Ant Army"
Embodied Intelligence: The Future Is Here — Three Hours of Industry Resonance and Global Perspective | Yunqi Capital x SEE Fund
Conversations on Innovation, Venture Capital, and Creation
Yunqi Capital | "Creao AI" Closes Two Consecutive Rounds of Tens of Millions of Dollars in Funding, with Yunqi Capital as Sole Angel Round Investor
Agentic OS Unlocks a New Paradigm for Agent Collaboration
Yunqi Family at WAIC: New Products, New Trends, New Connections — All in One Place | Yunqi Capital x World Artificial Intelligence Conference
Models Get Smarter, Agents Work Harder, Robots Stay Busier
WAIC Opens Today, Yunqi Capital Lineup Is Ready | Yunqi Capital x World Artificial Intelligence Conference
This schedule is worth bookmarking.
Yunqi Capital Leads Tens of Millions of RMB Seed Round in "BenZhi JiHuo" to Accelerate On-Device AI Deployment | Yunqi Capital
AGI continues to grow
From Hedge Fund to AI Startup Frontlines: A Conversation with Du Zhiheng on Rebuilding the "Information Superhighway" for Agents | Yunqi Capital Attent!on Podcast
**The "last mile" of search engines is being rebuilt.**
Vol.09 How Should Search Engines Work in the Agent Era? A Conversation with Yu Chen and Zhiheng Du on AI "New Infrastructure"
Walking Through the Heat, Gathering Along the Way | Yunqi Capital Quarterly
Yunqi Capital Q2 Good News
Yunqi Capital's Chen Yu: AI Entrepreneurship Isn't About Speed — Direction and Endurance Matter More | Partner Perspectives
Achieve non-consensus breakthroughs with limited resources
A Year Later, When Kimi and MiniMax Investors Sat Down Together Again
The wildest possibility may be that humans won't be the only intelligent species on this planet.
MiniMax Open-Sources Ultra Cost-Effective Reasoning Model, With Four Days of Back-to-Back Releases Ahead | Yunqi Capital
Innovation never stops.
Yunqi Capital x Tsinghua University E.E. | Exploring Embodied Intelligence in the Greater Bay Area
➤➤ On May 25, 2025, **"Tsinghua EEA · Industry Connect Afternoon Tea #012 — Exploring Embodied Intelligence in the Greater Bay Area"**, co-organized by Yunqi Capital, successfully concluded in Shenzhen. The event was hosted by the Tsinghua University Alumni Association Electronic Engineering Department Branch, the International Center for Advanced Technology Application Promotion (Shenzhen), and the Shenzhen Tsinghua University Alumni Association Electronic Engineering Department Branch. **Over 40 Tsinghua EEA alumni** deeply involved in embodied intelligence gathered in Shenzhen.
"Variable Robotics" Closes Two Consecutive Rounds Worth Hundreds of Millions of Yuan, Yunqi Capital Participates | Yunqi Capital
End-to-End Embodied Intelligence Accelerates Iteration
Creating Agents with Agents? A Conversation with Yunqi Capital's Chen Yu and Creao AI's Cheng Kai on the New Agent Tech Ecosystem | Yunqi Attent!on Podcast
Manus and Genspark's rapid rise to prominence have made Agent one of the most anticipated AI application formats for the general public in 2025. Meanwhile, the Agent development ecosystem has entered a stage of stronger compatibility and easier deployment, driven by new frameworks such as MCP and Agent-to-Agent.
Vol.08 Creating Agents with Agents? A Chat with Yunqi Capital's Chen Yu and Creao AI's Kai Cheng on the New Agent Infra Ecosystem
Yunqi Capital Named to ChinaVenture's "Top 10 Best Early-Stage VC Firms in China" for Fifth Consecutive Year, Portfolio Companies Win Eight Honors | Yunqi Capital News
Moving forward together — thanks for the recognition.
Yitu Technology Closes Pre-A Round, How AIOS Is Reimagining Automotive Smart Spaces | Yunqi Capital
Another follow-on investment, continuing the journey together.
Yunqi Capital in Conversation with MiniMax's Junjie Yan: Looking Back at 2024, What Changed and What Stayed the Same in AI Entrepreneurship | Yunqi Doers
On Original Innovation Intent, Technical Roadmap, and Product Portfolio
Yunqi Capital Named to Multiple Rankings Including CBN Future Industries Investors List, Jiemian China Top VC Firms | Honors Roundup
Side by side, good things happen.
Wisdom Cultivates the New, Striding Forward on Ten Years | Yunqi Capital 2024 Investor Annual Meeting
Seize the present, embrace the future.
Yunqi Capital Wins Multiple Prestigious Awards from Zero2IPO, ChinaVenture, Forbes, and More | Yunqi Capital Honors Roundup
Side by side, good things happen.
China's USD Funds Won't Disappear
Live long enough to long China.
Yunqi Capital Co-leads Over 100 Million RMB Series B in AI Smart Imaging Brand "hohem" | Yunqi Capital
How Can On-Device AI Help You Create Content?
Autumn's First Report Card Is In | Yunqi Capital's Latest Wins
Reaping the Autumn Harvest Together
Back-to-School Review: Is MiniMax's New "Multimodal Family Bucket" Any Good? | Yunqi Capital
Video, music, voice — it can do it all. Let's test it out together.
Investment, Technology, Commercialization — Where Is the "AI + Robotics" Wind Blowing? | Yunqi Capital Attent!on · Embodied Intelligence Recap
Unlocking a Future You Can Touch
Yunqi Capital Attent!on Podcast | Founders Up and Down the Supply Chain: From Embodiment to Intelligence, How Is AI "Awakening" Robots?
Let's Talk About the Messy Reality of Deployment and Application Bottlenecks
Vol.05 Has AI "Woken Up" the Robots? A Look at the Many Applications and Bottlenecks of Embodied Intelligence
WAIC 2024 Observations: AI Comes Down to Earth | Yunqi Capital Attent!on Tech Notebook
Robots, foundation models, AI applications — what new heights are they reaching in China's race to the top?
One Step Ahead: Unlocking the N Possibilities of Embodied Intelligence | Yunqi Gathering · Yunqi Capital Demo Day Now Open for Registration
When Embodied Intelligence Comes Knocking
You've Got an Invitation | Yunqi Capital X WAIC
For three years running, we've come.
Consensus Within Non-Consensus: A Conversation Among China's LLM Investors | Yunqi Tech π
New Wave, New Future
When Moonshot AI's investors sat down with MiniMax's investors
Five individuals and two companies.
Yunqi Capital's Chen Yu: How He Became the Earliest Investor in MiniMax | "Attent!on" Crossover with "Jun Zhang's Business Talks"
Let's Talk About the Present and Future of LLM Venture Capital
Vol.04 Yunqi Capital's Chen Yu: First to Bet on MiniMax, Behind the Scenes of LLM Investing | Crossover with *Zhang Xiaojun Jùn | Business Talk*
Yunqi Capital Spring-Summer Issue | In the Bright Season, Innovation Grows with Wanwu Capital
AGI Practice, Business Breakthroughs, and Reflections This Spring and Summer
Looking Back at AI's "May": The Five Most Important Little Things | Attent!on Tech Notes
The future is already here — it's just not evenly distributed.
MiniMax Founder Junjie Yan: First Principles on the Path to AGI | Yunqi Capital
What really needs to be done is to make technology and product iterate fast enough.
Yunqi Capital | In Conversation with MiniMax's Junjie Yan: AGI Isn't a Weapon — It's a Product Ordinary People Use Every Day
MiniMax is already one of China's most highly valued large language model companies.
Windrose Technology Closes Hundreds-of-Millions RMB Series B1 Round to Accelerate Mass Production and Delivery of New-Energy Heavy-Duty Trucks | Yunxun · Funding
Yunqi Capital led the Series A investment in the project
2023 Winter Report Cards Delivered | Highlights Reel
Recent Good News
"Yitu Technology" Raises Tens of Millions in Angel Round Led by Yunqi Capital | Yunxun
Providing middleware solutions for the intelligent transformation of Chinese auto brands
AI Recruitment Platform "HelloBoss" Raises Several Million USD in Pre-A Round, Led by Yunqi Capital | Yunqi Capital
Targeting the Japanese Market, Unlocking the Full Potential of AI+
"Endless Watt" Raises Nearly RMB 150 Million in Angel Round, Redefining Smart EV Chargers | Yunqi Capital
Day 1 Going Global in Europe and America: Breaking Through Two Major Challenges — Efficiency and Intelligence
Asking Science, Crafting the Future | Yunqi Capital 2023 Annual Fund Partners Meeting
Seeking the path to fundamental science, exploring the road to breakthroughs in technology and intelligent manufacturing.
First Fall Report Card | Victory Highlights
Recent Good News
MiniMax's Large Model Fully Opens to Public After Securing First-Batch Approval | YunXun
A New Milestone for Homegrown Chinese LLMs
What New Trends Did We See After Meeting the Robots? | World Robot Conference × Y·Robot
Why Are There So Many Humanoid Robots?
How Close Are We to General-Purpose Robots? | Y·Robot × World Robot Conference
AGI + Robotics: When "Embodied Intelligence" Enters Reality
After Robots Go Global: How to Localize Worldwide? | The B-Side of Entrepreneurship · Keenon Robotics
Keen on robotics, always passionate.
A Full View of the Yunqi Robot Family | "Y·Robot" X World Robot Conference
At the 2023 World Robot Conference: The Latest, Coolest, Most Practical Robots
AGI in Practice: Summer Results, Diverse Ecosystems, and Frontier Insights | Yunqi Capital Quarterly · Summer
Large language models have been integrated across thousands of industries, and a new ecosystem is flourishing.
Exploring Forward in a World with Open-Source Communities: There Will Be Challenges, But It Will Be Worth It | Riding the AGI+ Wave
More, Bigger, Better, More Valuable Open-Source Communities
How Close Are We to "General-Purpose Robots" With Large Models? | Riding the AGI+ Wave
Large language models: This can't be all on me.
Yunqi Capital at WAIC 2023: Three New Opportunities for Large Model Deployment
And, Yunqi Capital's AGI+ portfolio has added these new products —
Yunqi Capital Invited to Become a Founding Council Member of the Global Tech Industry Alliance | Yunqi News
Helping Unite Global Tech Forces
Windrose Technology has raised several hundred million yuan in a Series A round, with Yunqi Capital as co-lead investor | Yunqi Capital
Embracing a more economical, cleaner, and intelligent future for the logistics industry.
How Do You Get Large Models to Actually "Get Their Hands Dirty"? | Riding the AGI+ Wave in the Greater Bay Area
Searching for new forms, new extensions, and new frontiers of applications.
Yunqi's Chen Yu: The "80/20 Rule" in the LLM Era | Tencent Tech × Tidal Wave AGI+
Getting a model to 95% accuracy is definitely a moat.
Yunqi Capital Repeats as Top 5 Early-Stage VC in China at CV Awards, Among Other Honors | Yunqi News
Technological Innovation Powers Industrial Development
"RealMan Intelligent Technology" Closes Series A+ Round, Yunqi Capital Continues to Double Down | Yunqi Capital
Partnering with RealMan to Drive Ecosystem Growth for Ultra-Lightweight Humanoid Robotic Arms in the Service Sector
Speed Up LLM Apps 100x With Just a Few Lines of Code! How Yunqi Capital Helps Large Models Cut Costs and Boost Performance | Riding the AGI+ Wave
Who's Helping Large Models Cut Costs and Boost Speed?
AGI in Practice, Innovation Breakthroughs, and Frontier Insights This Spring | Yunqi Capital Quarterly · Spring Issue
New thinking and new practice in AI from Yunqi Capital and its portfolio companies.
SaaS × Large Models? Embrace Them, But Don't Rush | Yunqi Capital · Riding the AGI+ Wave
Who will stay ahead when large language models have redrawn the starting line?
"MiniMax" Powers WPS AI's Model Layer; Homegrown LLM Already Deployed Across Multiple Industries | Yunqi Capital · Riding the AGI+ Wave
The Backbone of China's AGI + Industry Push
Yunqi Capital · Riding the AGI Wave | 3 Weeks, 3 Cities: We Spoke with 150+ Founders About New Variables in the AGI Era
Embracing the AGI+ Era
Why "Copy to China" Is Hard to Replicate, and Where China's LLM Opportunity Lies
Recently, Bai Zeren, Senior Investment Director at Linear Capital, sat down with *Jazzyear* to share his views on the entrepreneurial opportunities brought by ChatGPT. When it comes to the domestic market for large language model startups, Linear Capital remains optimistic. "While the engineering detours and challenges will take time to work through, the probability of Chinese companies producing something with 80% of ChatGPT's capabilities within two to three years is quite high — even if surpassing what OpenAI has already built will be difficult."
We Did It: The First Angel-Round Autonomous Driving Startup to Ditch HD Maps | Yunqi Tech π
A groundbreaking fully integrated active intelligent driving system, launching in the consumer market this year
Come On, Young People, Go Explore the Light Ahead on the AIGC Path | Yunqi YoUNg Program
Join the adventure of technological innovation and industrial transformation!
Yunqi's Chen Yu: ChatGPT's Qualitative Leap Is More Than a Technical Shift | The Paper X Yunqi Capital ChatGPT Special
When it comes to large language model R&D, startups have more flexibility than big companies.
Who Can Build China's ChatGPT? We Invested in This Company 15 Months Ago | Yunqi Capital ChatGPT Special
The first multimodal AI large model startup in China
Exclusive | Source Code Capital, ZhenFund Confirmed to Join In — Wang Huiwen's "Chinese OpenAI" Is Being Scrambled For
China's investment world seems to have gone back to 2016 overnight.
Yunqi Capital Earns Six Honors Including TMTPost's "Investor of the Year" | Yunqi News
Trailblazers of a New Round of Productivity Revolution
Yunqi Capital's Chen Yu Named to 2022 "F40 China Young Investors" List | Yunqi Capital News
Innovation is reshaping the present and defining the future.
Yunqi Capital Named Again to 21st Century Business Herald's "Top 10 Early-Stage Investment Institutions for Technology and Manufacturing" and Other Awards | Yunqi Capital News
The journey toward the long game continues.
The Only Chinese Company Named a "Strong Performer" by Forrester, PingCAP Leads HTAP Frontier Trends | Yunqi Capital
Leading the "Invisible Technology" Era
Go Discover, Go Challenge! PingCAP DevCon 2022 Goes Live Tomorrow | Yunqi Capital X PingCAP
From Cloud Native to Serverless: Reflections and Takeaways
