Gaorong Monthly · August | Waterdrop Completes $230 Million Series D Funding; Gaorong Ventures Named Among 36Kr's "Top 5 Most GP-Trusted VC Firms by LPs"

About Rongbao: Rongbao is a monthly digest that brings together noteworthy news and insights from Gaorong Ventures and its portfolio companies.

Each issue shares just ten items — covering not only important funding announcements and milestones, but also emerging trends, new innovations, and fresh perspectives.

In line with Gaorong's vision of "creating" a better life, we believe every step of innovation brings infinite possibilities.

Recognition · Gaorong Ventures ranked in 36Kr's "Top 5 VC Firms Most Recognized by LPs in China 2020"; Chang Chen named Zero2IPO's "King of Returns" in Chinese Investment for 2020

In August, Gaorong Ventures received multiple industry honors. 36Kr released its annual rankings, with Gaorong placing in the "Top 5 VC Firms Most Recognized by LPs in China 2020" and "Top 10 VC Firms Most Welcomed by Entrepreneurs in China 2020." Gaorong founding partners Chang Chen, Gao Xiang, and Yue Bin were all named to the "Top 100 Investors Most Welcomed by Entrepreneurs in China 2020."

Zero2IPO Group released its 2020 Investment Community Top 100 investor list, where Chang Chen was named "King of Returns in Chinese Investment for 2020." This marked the first time the award was given, recognizing the architects behind some of the highest-returning deals in Chinese venture capital history.

The 8th China Venture Capital "Golden Eagle Awards" by Securities Times recognized Gaorong Ventures as a top-10 VC firm of the year and top-10 exit performer of the year, along with a special public welfare award — top-20 anti-pandemic pioneer investor. The firm also placed in the top 10 for AI, consumer, and big data/enterprise services sectors. Chang Chen was named investor of the year, Gao Xiang placed in the top 10 for big data/enterprise services, Yue Bin in the top 10 for AI, and Gaorong partner Rui Han in the top 10 for consumer.

Insurtech · Waterdrop raises $230 million in Series D

At its Global Partners Conference on August 20, Waterdrop announced the completion of a $230 million Series D round, co-led by Swiss Re Group and Tencent.

Gaorong Ventures co-led Waterdrop's angel round and has continued to back the company through its Series A, B, and C rounds, reinvesting again in this round.

Founded in 2016 by former Meituan founding team member Shen Peng, Waterdrop operates with the mission of "using internet technology to help ordinary people access insurance and medical protection, safeguarding hundreds of millions of families." The company has pioneered an ecosystem model in China combining "crowdfunding + mutual aid + insurance" to help lower- and middle-income populations build personal health protection systems.

Latest figures show Waterdrop Insurance Mall has covered over 100 million users, with annualized written premiums reaching nearly 6 billion yuan in the first half of 2020. Waterdrop Crowdfunding has attracted 320 million donors, with over 1 billion individual donations totaling more than 32 billion yuan, making it China's leading critical illness fundraising platform. Waterdrop Mutual Aid has assisted over 12,819 families, disbursing more than 1.615 billion yuan in mutual aid funds.

Online Education · Kaikeba secures 550 million yuan in independent financing, leading new vocational education

On August 26, Kaikeba announced its formal spin-off from UCommune Group, with an independent Series A round of 550 million yuan — co-invested by Gaorong Ventures and Hillhouse, and the largest single financing round in new vocational online education history. UCommune founder and chairman Dr. Fang Yechang unveiled Kaikeba's upgraded brand positioning, focusing on digital talent cultivation in the new infrastructure era to lead the new vocational education industry.

Launched in August 2013 as UCommune's digital talent online education platform, Kaikeba is among China's earliest online education institutions focused on IT, internet, and digital fields, with over 4 million cumulative paying students. Over seven years, Kaikeba has assembled frontline instructors and practical projects from leading global IT and internet companies, offering systematic online training and advanced courses in Java, web front-end, data analytics, Python, AI, product management, operations, and IoT. Through live streaming, recorded video, AI interactive scripts, online programming labs, scenario-based interactive courseware, and comprehensive assessments, the platform meets diverse learning needs across industries and career stages, with complete talent services to support career advancement and sustainable growth.

Smart Parking · AIPARK closes nine-figure Series C+ round

In August, city-level smart parking platform AIPARK announced a nine-figure yuan Series C+ round. The company had previously announced a 300 million yuan Series C in June, led by Gaorong Ventures.

Founded in 2015, AIPARK addresses pain points in urban on-street parking management through overhead video arrays and AI algorithms. Its four product lines — AIPARK SkyEye (overhead video hardware), AIPARK City (urban smart parking management system), AIPARK Commander (static traffic order management system), and AIPARK Charge (city-level parking-charging integrated management platform) — tackle problems of parking scarcity, disorder, and governance difficulty while improving resource utilization.

AIPARK is reportedly the only AI company in China's static traffic sector certified by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, with over 200 core technologies and patents. Its parking solutions have been deployed in on-street public spaces and commercial lots across Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Fuzhou, Chengdu, Xining, Shijiazhuang, Handan, Zhangjiakou, Bozhou, Tangshan, and other cities.

General-Purpose AI Chips · Biren Technology completes Pre-B round

Following what was reportedly the industry's largest Series A round in mid-June, general-purpose AI chip designer Biren Technology announced another major investment in August, completing its Pre-B round. Less than a year since founding, the company has raised nearly 2 billion yuan in total. This round was led by Hillhouse, with Gaorong Ventures among the participating investors.

Founded in 2019, Biren Technology's team comprises core professionals and researchers from leading domestic and international chip and cloud computing companies. The company is dedicated to developing original general-purpose computing architectures and efficient software-hardware platforms, while providing integrated solutions in intelligent computing. Its roadmap begins with cloud-based general-purpose intelligent computing, gradually catching up to and surpassing existing solutions across AI training and inference, graphics rendering, and high-performance general-purpose computing — achieving breakthroughs in domestic high-end general-purpose AI chips.

Robotics · XYZ Robotics closes nearly $20 million Series A+

XYZ Robotics (星猿哲科技), a company focused on robotic hand-eye coordination applications, has officially announced a Series A+ round of nearly $20 million. Gaorong Ventures, which led the company's Series A in 2019, continued to invest in this round.

Founded by CMU Robotics PhD Jiaji Zhou, MIT EECS PhD Yu Guanting, and Peking University master's graduate Xing Liangbo, XYZ Robotics is the only team worldwide to have placed in the top three of the Amazon Robotics Challenge for three consecutive years.

Leveraging three core technical capabilities — vision, path planning, and end-effector grasping — XYZ Robotics has developed standardized, easily deployable products. Across its three main product lines of small-item sorting in logistics, mixed-case palletizing/depalletizing, and industrial machine tending, the company has demonstrated rapid replication and won broad orders and recognition from end customers, system integrators, and clients at home and abroad.

Drug Discovery · Galixir raises nearly $10 million to apply AI to pharmaceutical R&D

Galixir (星药科技) has announced the completion of a nearly $10 million Pre-A round. Gaorong Ventures, which led the company's angel round in 2019, continued to invest in this round.

Founded in 2019, Galixir is an AI-powered drug discovery solutions provider. The company combines cutting-edge artificial intelligence with pharmaceutical, chemical, and biological technologies to build an AI drug discovery platform, helping scientists explore broader druggable space while reducing R&D costs and shortening development cycles. Galixir has already built multiple drug discovery modules including retrosynthesis prediction, drug screening, and molecular design, delivered several client design proposals, and become a strategic partner to well-known domestic pharmaceutical companies, working with industry experts to advance AI applications in drug R&D.

Enterprise Services · eCloud Data Master raises tens of millions of yuan in Series A+

In August, eCloud Data Master, a CDM (Copy Data Management) technology developer, announced a tens-of-millions yuan Series A+ round, with Gaorong Ventures participating.

Founded in 2015, eCloud Data Master focuses on CDM technology R&D, using modern backup approaches to help enterprise clients achieve data modernization management with a complete product portfolio. Its CDM products demonstrate industry-leading capabilities in modern backup, rapid recovery, multi-copy data distribution, and copy data management in hybrid cloud architectures. The company's core product, eCloud Data Master, has been deployed at scale across government, telecommunications, banking, securities, and power industries, helping enterprises build agile and efficient secondary storage data service platforms.

Artificial Intelligence · YITU wins first place in "Large-scale Complex Scene Human Video Parsing" challenge

At the "Large-scale Complex Scene Human Video Parsing" challenge hosted by ACM Multimedia (ACM MM), a top global multimedia academic society, YITU's algorithm took first place. Its evaluation metric wf-mAP@avg reached 0.26, improving nearly threefold over previous academic benchmarks and winning the "Action Recognition" track by a decisive margin.

Action recognition analyzes human behavior at the individual level, focusing on single-person and multi-person actions. This technology is being applied across smart cities, workplace safety, intelligent commerce, and smart entertainment. YITU continues to iterate on its action recognition algorithm performance, and with its self-developed high-performance AI chips, aims to accelerate AI deployment and unlock more urban and lifestyle scenarios.

Ronghui Organization Month · Deng Kangming and Fang Shengtao on building organizational evolution flywheels and true executive teams for long-term battlefield victory

In August, Ronghui (榕汇), Gaorong's founder community, held its Organization Month series of offline practical workshops. Former Alibaba Group senior vice president and chief people officer Deng Kangming shared systematic, top-level thinking on how startups should approach organizational building and team development. Deng emphasized that founders must have sufficient patience and breathing room for organizational construction, evolving the driving force of organizational growth from the founder's "personal will" to "team objectives" and "organizational mission."

Fang Shengtao, founder of Chief Organization Officer and former Longfor Group executive director and chief human resources officer, shared his systematic understanding of "true executive teams" — helping founders build mental frameworks and methodologies for constructing such teams, breaking down the key elements of his "true executive team" model, and demonstrating how to use these frameworks to solve real problems in dynamic, complex systems.

Waterdrop raises $230 million in Series D, co-led by Swiss Re Group and Tencent

Kaikeba secures 550 million yuan in independent financing, leading new vocational education

Biren Technology completes major Pre-B round as general-purpose AI chip designer

XYZ Robotics closes nearly $20 million Series A+ for robotic hand-eye coordination applications