Rongbao · June | Gaotu Techedu successfully lists on the NYSE, Nuro partners with Domino's on autonomous pizza delivery...

About Gaorong Monthly: Starting this month, we will publish the Gaorong Monthly as a regular feature, curating noteworthy news and insights from Gaorong Ventures and our portfolio companies.

In each issue, we share 10 things — including key funding updates and milestones, but also new trends, innovations, and perspectives we find worth highlighting.

As Gaorong Ventures works toward its vision of "Creating better life through innovation," we believe every step forward in innovation opens up infinite possibilities.

Online Education · Gaotu Techedu Lists on NYSE

On June 6 Eastern Time, Gaotu Techedu, a Chinese K-12 online education company, successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "GSX." The company priced its IPO at $10.50 per share, offering 19.8 million shares and raising $208 million.

Gaotu Techedu is the first Chinese K-12 online education company to go public in the U.S., and the first Chinese online education company to achieve scaled profitability at the time of its IPO.

In 2015, Gaorong Ventures led Gaotu Techedu's Series A round. The company is also notable for reaching the public markets after only a single round of venture funding.

Gaotu Techedu's tutoring courses cover the full curriculum for elementary, middle, and high school, alongside language training, vocational certification, and lifestyle interest classes. The company employs a "star teachers + dual-teacher support" model, selecting experienced instructors to deliver live-streamed large classes with real-time tutoring support, using its "7+6 Efficient Learning Method" to give students access to quality educational resources anytime, anywhere.

Larry Chen, founder, chairman, and CEO of Gaotu Techedu, noted that the listing marks an important milestone, and that the company will continue pursuing its vision of using technology to improve education — "bringing online education back to its educational essence, continuously working to enhance teaching quality, and improving the learning experience for our customers." (Read more about Larry Chen and Gaotu Techedu's founding story)

New E-Commerce · Pinduoduo Showcases Progress of "New Brand Initiative" in Cultivating Domestic Brands

On June 28, at a Yangtze River Delta communication event for its "New Brand Initiative," Pinduoduo announced that driven by the platform's rapid growth and the initiative's momentum, it expects to reach one billion customized product orders annually within three years. In just over six months since the initiative's launch, Pinduoduo has already processed more than 57 million customized product orders — the first time the company has collectively presented the initiative's progress.

Launched in December 2018, the "New Brand Initiative" is a systematic platform focused on the growth of China's small and medium-sized manufacturers. Under the plan, Pinduoduo will support 1,000 factories across various industries, providing R&D guidance, big data support, and traffic prioritization to help SMEs connect with the real needs of 440 million consumers at minimal cost and cultivate new brands.

To date, Pinduoduo has received applications from over 6,000 manufacturing enterprises, with nearly 500 companies and brands participating in pilot programs and 62 becoming formal members.

Pinduoduo's Data Research Institute noted: "Based on distributed AI technology, our platform generates and aggregates massive demand daily. Our team of over 200 data engineers works to 'understand' consumers while fully protecting user privacy, then our 'New Brand Lab' industry experts translate those insights for upstream production."

Autonomous Vehicles · Nuro Partners with Domino's for Driverless Pizza Delivery in Houston

On June 18, robotics company Nuro and Domino's Pizza announced a partnership to launch a driverless pizza delivery pilot in Houston, Texas. Starting later this year, Domino's will use Nuro's fleet of custom-built unmanned vehicles to deliver pizza to Houston residents.

Founded in 2016 by Jiajun Zhu, former principal engineer on Google's self-driving team, and Dave Ferguson, Nuro combines software and hardware expertise to design and manufacture products that accelerate the integration of robotics into everyday life. Nuro is committed to partnering with businesses to help them find more cost-efficient ways to transport goods and create new experiences for users.

Previously, Nuro partnered with Kroger, the world's largest grocery retail chain, to launch the first driverless delivery service available to the general public, using its robotic fleet to deliver groceries to residents in Scottsdale, Arizona and nearby Houston. (Read more about Nuro's partnership with Kroger)

Social E-Commerce · Beidian Signs Strategic Partnership with Tencent Cloud to Accelerate Social Commerce Growth

On June 11, Tencent Cloud and Beidian signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Shenzhen. The two parties will deepen collaboration across computing and networking, storage and CDN, cloud databases, cloud security, monitoring and management, domain services, mobile and communications, video services, big data, and AI products and services to accelerate Beidian's social commerce business.

Beidian president Gu Rong stated that the company hopes to address challenges in computing stability and scalability brought by growing user numbers and order volumes through cloud migration. After evaluating multiple cloud service providers, Beidian moved its servers to Tencent Cloud in September 2018. Going forward, Beidian will leverage Tencent's ecosystem and Tencent Cloud's infrastructure and technical advantages to invest heavily in intelligent operations, smart customer service, and smart retail to better serve its KOLs (key opinion leaders) and users.

Meanwhile, Beidian's parent company Beibei Group plans to invest at least 200 million yuan over the next three years in AI, big data, cloud computing, and other infrastructure to build a social network with 100 million participating users, enabling social commerce to integrate more quickly into everyday life. Beidian will also deepen collaboration with Tencent Advertising, Tencent Security, WeChat Pay, and other parts of the Tencent ecosystem to drive rapid, sustainable growth in its social commerce business.

Internet Health Insurance · Waterdrop Raises Over 1 Billion Yuan in Series C, Upgrades Waterdrop Insurance Mall

On June 12, at Waterdrop's 2019 Global Partners Conference, founder and CEO Shen Peng announced that Waterdrop — which operates Waterdrop Insurance Mall, Waterdrop Mutual Aid, and Waterdrop Crowdfunding — has completed a Series C round of over 1 billion yuan. The round was led by Boyu Capital, with participation from Tencent, Gaorong Ventures, CICC Capital, and other investors. (Read more)

Gaorong Ventures was Waterdrop's angel investor and has continued to back the company through its Series A, B, and C rounds.

This marks Waterdrop's second funding round in the first half of 2019. On March 27, the company announced a nearly 500 million yuan Series B round. In less than three months, Waterdrop has raised over 1.5 billion yuan in total — a record for the internet health insurance sector this year.

"Waterdrop Insurance Mall" is a key commercial segment of Waterdrop, formerly known as "Waterdrop Insurance." It holds a nationwide insurance brokerage license. On the same day, Waterdrop Insurance announced a brand upgrade plan to expand and deepen its insurance product categories, enrich its product and service offerings, and strengthen partnerships with participating insurance companies. Veteran actor Ni Dahong joined as "Waterdrop Curator."

AI Semantic Interaction · Zhuiyi Technology Wins Knowledge-Driven Dialogue Championship at 2019 Language and Intelligence Challenge

Recently, Zhuiyi Technology claimed first place in the "Knowledge-Driven Dialogue" task at the 2019 Language and Intelligence Technology Challenge.

The competition was co-hosted by the China Computer Federation, the Chinese Information Processing Society of China, and Baidu, attracting nearly 2,500 participating teams across three tasks: machine reading comprehension, knowledge-driven dialogue, and information extraction — all aimed at advancing research in language understanding and interaction.

As a leader in intelligent semantic technology, Zhuiyi Technology is committed to exploring cutting-edge AI semantic interaction capabilities including intent recognition, sentiment analysis, knowledge graphs, reading comprehension, and multi-turn dialogue. In 2018, the Zhuiyi team won the CMRC machine reading comprehension evaluation. It also placed third in the 2018 World AI Innovation Competition's Human-Computer Interaction Innovation Application finals.

Over three years, Zhuiyi Technology has gradually built multimodal semantic capabilities spanning text, voice, and vision, continuously pushing boundaries in the depth of AI understanding and the breadth of interaction scenarios.

AI + Healthcare · YITU Has Two Medical AI Applications Selected as National Health Commission Best Practices

On June 21, the National Health Commission announced the results of its "Top 30 Best Cases of Medical Health AI Application Implementation." YITU Healthcare, in partnership with collaborators, had two medical AI application cases selected — the only medical AI company with two cases recognized simultaneously.

YITU's selected cases were: a clinical application study on the value of care.ai Intelligent Lung Cancer Imaging Diagnosis in partnership with Union Hospital, Huazhong University of Science and Technology; and the application of assisted diagnosis products in pediatric outpatient and emergency clinical scenarios at Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center.

Since entering the healthcare sector in 2016, YITU has evolved from helping doctors with labor-intensive, repetitive, low-value-add tasks to synthesizing multimodal information for complex diagnostic support — continuously improving product maturity and application depth to address real challenges in healthcare.

YITU's AI technology is widely applied across public safety, healthcare, finance, retail, and intelligent urban management.

Trendy Consumer Goods · Poizon App and CBNData Release 2019 Trend Consumption Insights Report: Sneakers Edition

On June 26, Poizon App and CBNData (First Financial Data Center) released the 2019 Trend Consumption Insights Report: Sneakers Edition (View full report). Based on CBNData consumer big data and Poizon App platform data from January 2018 to June 2019, the report analyzes the trendy consumption behavior of Poizon users to map the current state of Chinese youth sneaker culture and illuminate the future of China's trend market. Key findings include:

• In 2018, Taobao sneaker brand searches reached 300 million, indicating rapid growth in the trend market;
• Supply-demand imbalance in sneaker releases has made "impossible to buy at retail" the new normal;
• Trend-focused e-commerce platforms have emerged, with vertical platforms like Poizon App leading in China;
• "Authenticity guarantee" has become consumers' core demand, driving the introduction of systematic authentication processes;
• Gen Z represents the primary sneaker consumer demographic, with relatively balanced gender distribution;
• Niche colorways are increasingly popular — men favor yellow and purple, while women prefer pink and green;
• Consumers on sneaker platforms are more willing to "splurge" on classic series releases.

AI + Drug Discovery · Unknown, China's First AI Microbiome Drug Company, Raises Nearly $10 Million

On June 25, Unknown (Shenzhen Unknown Biotechnology Co., Ltd.) officially announced the completion of its Series A and A+ rounds (Read more). Unknown closed its Series A in August 2018, led by Gaorong Ventures with participation from 5Y Capital and ZhenFund. Earlier this year, it completed its A+ round led by Lihe Hongxin with participation from Yahui Investment. The two rounds totaled nearly $10 million. Going forward, Unknown will further refine its proprietary microbiome drug R&D platform and accelerate several clinical pipelines currently underway.

Founded in 2017, Unknown is China's first AI-powered microbiome drug company, dedicated to tackling refractory diseases and improving human health through gut microbiome modulation, powered by AI technology and bioengineering.

AI-powered microbiome drug discovery is approaching an inflection point for explosive growth, and Gaorong Ventures continues to track the disruptive potential of AI technology in the pharmaceutical industry.

Industry Recognition · Gaorong Ventures Wins Multiple Awards at 2019 China Venture Capital Annual Awards and Pencil's 2019 New Consumption Industry Rankings

At the CVCRI 2019 China Venture Capital Annual Awards · Golden Investment Awards, Gaorong Ventures was named to the Top 10 Most Influential VC Institutions in China for 2019. The firm also received Top 20 awards in Internet Investment, Consumer Upgrade Investment, and AI Investment.

At Pencil's Truth List — 2019 New Consumption Industry Rankings, Gaorong Ventures was named to the Top 20 Most Influential Investment Institutions in New Consumption, while Gaorong Ventures founding partner Chang Chen was named to the Top 20 Most Influential Investors in New Consumption.