About Rongbao

In this issue of Rongbao, we highlight how several innovative companies — drawing on strong R&D capabilities and deep understanding of industry needs — are launching new products, scaling production, and continuously solving pain points for both industries and consumers, contributing to a better quality of life.

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Funding

#01

Xinhuazhang Closes Hundreds of Millions of RMB in Series B Funding Doubling Down on Agile EDA Verification to Empower System-Level Innovation

In November, Xinhuazhang, a provider of system-level verification EDA solutions, announced the completion of a Series B round worth hundreds of millions of RMB. The round was led by CICC Capital's CEIC Fund, with participation from Mirae Asset, Henglu Asset, and others. Gaorong Ventures previously led Xinhuazhang's Series A round and continued to participate in its A+ and Pre-B rounds.

Xinhuazhang has built its platform on technical pillars including intelligent debugging, intelligent compilation, intelligent verification cockpit, and intelligent cloud-native technologies. It offers seven product lines covering the full spectrum of digital chip verification needs: hardware emulation systems, FPGA prototyping systems, intelligent scenario verification, formal verification, logic simulation, system debugging, and verification cloud — providing partners with independently developed, secure, and reliable chip industry solutions and expert consulting services. At the same time, Xinhuazhang is committed to researching and developing EDA 2.0, an intelligent electronic design platform for the future, using technological innovation to accelerate system-level innovation efficiency and make chip design simpler and more accessible.

Faced with the enormous challenges that emerging technologies pose to verification scale, efficiency, and completeness in system-level application innovation, Xinhuazhang works backward from end goals. It has built the ZhiV verification platform on a unified underlying architecture and a full-flow digital verification toolchain, targeting automated, intelligent rapid iteration. This provides users with agile verification solutions from the system level to the circuit level, helping shorten the time-to-market from chip to system. Read more

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By the Numbers

#01

Pinduoduo Reports Q3 2022 Earnings Platform Revenue Reaches 35.5 Billion RMB

On November 28, Pinduoduo released its Q3 2022 report. The company posted revenue of 35.0 billion RMB, up 65.1% year over year. R&D expenses hit another record high for the quarter, rising 11.4% to 2.70 billion RMB. Pinduoduo stated it will continue increasing investment in technological innovation to create long-term value through technology.

In Q3, Pinduoduo continued deepening its roots in rural areas, ramping up subsidy investments with initiatives like "Super Agricultural Products Festival," "Duoduo Harvest Pavilion," and "Duoduo New Craftsmanship." It maintained its "zero commission" policy on agricultural products, leveraging tools like billion-subsidy programs, group-buying, and livestreaming to cover over 500,000 agricultural SKUs — building the incremental market needed for high-quality development of the real economy. Under the pull effect of its long-term agriculture-focused, reality-anchored strategy, platform-wide consumption also continued to improve.

Leveraging its advantage in aggregated consumer markets, Pinduoduo has used rapid-response testing, reverse customization, and standard output to promote digital-real integration for select manufacturing industrial belts. This year, it has successively launched "Duoduo New National Trend" and "Duoduo New Craftsmanship" initiatives to help Chinese manufacturing connect directly with vast consumer markets.

#02

BOSS Zhipin Reports Q3 2022 Earnings Monthly Active Users Grow to 32.4 Million

On November 29, BOSS Zhipin released its Q3 2022 earnings report. Monthly active users (MAU) rose to 32.4 million, up 22% quarter over quarter. Revenue reached 1.179 billion RMB, exceeding market expectations.

Increasing R&D investment to continuously optimize user experience and job-candidate matching efficiency is the core driver of BOSS Zhipin's user growth, retention, and employment facilitation value. In Q3, the company spent 290 million RMB on R&D, up 39% year over year.

The company continued strengthening core technical capabilities in Q3 to improve matching accuracy for key demographic groups. By uncovering more potential career directions for fresh graduates, the average number of connections per graduate and recruiter rose 6% year over year in Q3.

According to FIFA's official website, BOSS Zhipin became an official sponsor of the 2022 Qatar World Cup in the Asia-Pacific region. As a regional sponsor, BOSS Zhipin will use the World Cup opportunity to expand the breadth and penetration of its direct-hire services across industries and geographies.

#03

Geekplus Ranks #1 Globally in AMR Market Share for 4 Consecutive Years Becomes World's Largest Warehouse Logistics Robotics Company

Recently, global research authority Interact Analysis released The Mobile Robot Market-2022. The report shows that as of 2021, Geekplus maintained its #1 position in global AMR market share for the fourth consecutive year. Additionally, in 2021 Geekplus claimed the top spot globally in warehouse logistics robotics business scale, with market share roughly double that of the second-place competitor — establishing itself as the world's largest warehouse logistics robotics company with absolute leading advantage.

In warehouse logistics, Geekplus has built overwhelming competitive advantages. On one hand, it continuously innovates based on customer scenario needs, developing a full portfolio of warehouse robotics and solutions covering standard shelf-to-person solutions, next-generation PopPick shelf-to-person solutions, and SkyPick solutions combining立体存储 with goods-to-person picking — precisely matching diverse customer requirements.

On the other hand, powered by Geekplus's intelligent algorithms and smart warehouse management systems, these solutions have helped customers achieve efficient, stable intelligent warehouse logistics with real value delivery. Customer repurchases, high satisfaction, and strong word-of-mouth continue to solidify Geekplus's leadership position, driving sustained market leadership.

#04

Innovusion Achieves New Leap in High-Performance LiDAR Production Capacity 50,000 Units Rolled Off Production Line

In November 2022, Innovusion completed production of its 50,000th image-grade ultra-long-range LiDAR, marking another leap in mass production capability and helping advance the large-scale application of high-performance LiDAR in the industry.

Facing increasingly diverse application scenarios and growing industry demand, Innovusion has mobilized resources across the board to efficiently drive capacity expansion planning and execution. Through close team coordination, rigorous testing and calibration, and deep磨合 with upstream and downstream partners, Innovusion successfully achieved production ramp-up. Meanwhile, thanks to highly automated and digitized production line construction and performance improvements, Innovusion maintains higher product consistency and reliability even at large production volumes, effectively boosting production efficiency and reducing costs.

Innovusion's product portfolio covers complete software and hardware combinations, providing diverse solutions for different industries and application scenarios with wide applications in advanced assisted driving, autonomous driving, connected vehicles, smart highways, rail transit, and industrial automation. Its image-grade ultra-long-range LiDAR Falcon was mass-delivered this year as standard equipment in NIO's ET7, ES7, and ET5 Aquila super-sensing systems. In China, Innovusion works closely with industry partners including Baidu Apollo and Mushroom Vehicle Alliance; it also maintains forward-looking commercial deployments and applications across Europe, America, and globally.

#05

BioGeometry Achieves Internationally Leading Results in Antibody Affinity Prediction Accelerating Antibody Drug Development

Recently, AI macromolecular drug development company BioGeometry, in collaboration with Yanling Wu's team at the Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Synthetic Immunology, made major progress in antibody optimization. BioGeometry's self-developed antibody design platform doubled antibody affinity through a wet-dry experimental closed loop, validating its reliability and efficiency and pointing toward new directions for future antibody drug R&D.

Affinity maturation holds a critical position in antibody drug development. BioGeometry developed an atomic-level geometric deep learning model, pre-trained on protein complex structure data, enabling rapid and effective modeling of antigen-antibody interactions with internationally leading performance on mutant affinity prediction tasks. Building on this model, BioGeometry further constructed a one-stop antibody design platform capable of simultaneously optimizing multiple other druggable properties including stability, solubility, and viscosity — accelerating the antibody development process.

BioGeometry is currently collaborating with multiple academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies to accelerate technology iteration and成果转化 of its AI-based antibody design platform, with the goal of advancing drug candidate molecules into clinical stages as soon as possible.

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New Products

#01

Multiple Companies Debut at CIIE with Global Product Launches and Strategic Partnerships

The fifth China International Import Expo (CIIE) was recently held in Shanghai, with multiple Gaorong Ventures portfolio companies in attendance.

Yatsen Holding returned to CIIE under the theme "Colorful Realm, Shining Future," with its full brand matrix making its first collective appearance at the expo. Spanning beauty and skincare categories, the lineup included EVE LOM, Galenic, Abiby, DR.WU, Perfect Diary, Little Ondine, Pink Bear, and more — reaching diverse consumer segments with varied beauty and skincare needs. Among these, EVE LOM's Radiance Repair Retinol Serum made its global debut during CIIE.

At this year's expo, Dingdong Maicai signed a strategic agreement with New Zealand's Silver Fern Farms to directly source grass-fed venison, young bull, and other premium red meats from New Zealand pastures for Chinese consumers' tables. The cooperation is valued at 50 million RMB. Dingdong Maicai's "buyer team" has attended CIIE for five consecutive years, partnering with numerous high-quality overseas agricultural production regions.

Genki Forest's Youkuang natural soft mineral water appeared as the official hydration support for CIIE volunteers, ensuring volunteer services and letting attendees experience the unique appeal of "real mineral water."

Bloks showcased numerous high-potential products including "Ancient Architecture Series — Hall of Supreme Harmony," "Ancient Architecture Series — Hall of Central Harmony," Three-Body Problem "Droplet — Doomsday Battle," "China Aerospace Series — Tianhe Core Module," "Mechanical Classic Off-Road Vehicle," and "Chinese Flower Series — Lily and Peony" — sparking a new wave in Chinese building blocks.

Wobbe Medical made its CIIE debut with globally innovative achievements in neurointervention and comprehensive stroke solutions. During the expo, Wobbe Medical announced that its pEGASUS™ intracranial stent (with hydrophilic coating) would be available for trial use in Hainan Boao, and officially launched the "CNIT-Wobbe Medical Innovation Center" — comprehensively advancing domestic stroke prevention and treatment into a fast development track and bringing additional benefits to Chinese patients.

#02

Huaxin Bio Releases 3D FloTrix® microSPIN 6-Channel Miniature Bioreactor

Recently, Huaxin Bio officially released its self-developed innovative product — the 3D FloTrix® microSPIN 6-channel miniature bioreactor — dedicated to providing efficient, stable, and economical solutions for cell drug R&D, organoid development, virus packaging, plasmid transfection, gene and protein expression, and tumor research.

The 3D FloTrix® microSPIN 6-channel miniature bioreactor uses an electrically driven magnetic stirring device combined with 3D FloTrix® 3D stirred cell culture plates to enable simultaneous exploration and validation of multiple process conditions, ensuring maximum R&D cost reduction in a dynamic biomimetic environment. It is suitable for research applications (universities/hospitals), clinical research (hospitals/testing companies), and R&D applications (pharmaceutical companies/CROs).

The reactor can simultaneously run 6 process condition explorations, greatly shortening R&D cycles; features ten preset processes for one-button operation; and stands only 75mm tall, with four units fitting in a 170L incubator for 24 concurrent control experiments.

#03

Westlake Omics Launches Spatial Proteomics Service, Advancing Precision Medicine

Spatial proteomics, an emerging method for mapping the spatial heterogeneity of proteomes in biological samples, can be used to study disease-related spatial protein expression profile changes — providing entirely new perspectives for discovering biomarkers and developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic methods.

On November 30, 2022, Kiryl D. Piatkevich's team at Westlake University and Tiannan Guo's team at Westlake University published "Spatially resolved proteomics via tissue expansion" in Nature Communications. They proposed ProteomEx, a spatial proteomics method based on expansion hydrogel technology capable of analyzing spatial heterogeneity in tissue section samples with ~160 μm lateral resolution (equivalent to ~0.61 nL tissue volume). The study not only mapped and validated ProteomEx's utility across diverse sample types including brain, liver, and breast cancer, but also successfully compared proteome expression across different brain regions and subregions in an Alzheimer's disease mouse model, identifying region-specific differentially expressed proteins.

Westlake Omics is commercializing this ProteomEx-based spatial proteomics technology, launching expanded proteomics research services to help advance precision medicine. The technology embeds tissue in expandable hydrogel, allowing samples to be physically enlarged while maintaining original morphology for precise physical sectioning with accurate spatial position information. Combined with next-generation 4D-DIA technology, this achieves high-depth identification.

Nov

Vision

#01

Hellobike Debuts First Virtual Human — Intelligent Mobility Digital Knight "Hellobike Turing"

#02

XTransfer 2022 Future of Foreign Trade Conference Concludes Successfully: 12 Speakers, 17 Hours of Livestreaming, 500,000 Online Viewers

Nov

Recognition

On November 29, 36Kr released the WISE 2022 New Economy King annual enterprise list, with multiple Gaorong Ventures portfolio companies making the cut: Huakong Qingjiao (frontier technology), Style3D (enterprise services), Genki Forest, Xiaodian Technology, Dewu, and Ling Shi Hen Mang (consumer lifestyle), Dianxiaomi, ADVANCE.AI, and XTransfer (cross-border services), ZhiXiang Bio and Cornerstone Robotics (healthcare), WeView and China Energy Storage (green energy), Flexiv, Geekplus, and XYZ Robotics (advanced manufacturing), and Qiyuan World (culture and content).

On November 12, the China FOF Research Center released its 2022 specialized rankings, with Gaorong Ventures making the 2022 Top 10 Semiconductor/Healthcare/Enterprise Service Investment Institutions list. Gaorong Ventures founding partners Chang Chen, Gao Xiang, and Yue Bin were respectively named to the 2022 Top 30 Healthcare Investors, Top 10 Enterprise Service Investors, and Top 30 Semiconductor Investors. Additionally, Chang Chen was named to Jiemian News's 2022 Top 10 Chinese Venture Capitalists.

Nov

Ronghui

"Financial Strategy Season" Event Series Launches

Today's startups operate in a fundamentally new growth environment that comprehensively tests entrepreneurs' strategic resolve, antifragility, and refined management capabilities. In this context, a pragmatic, prudent, and forward-looking financial management system serves as a critical foundation for companies to withstand external risks and support key strategies.

Ronghui is launching its "Financial Strategy Season" event series, working with portfolio companies to focus on practical topics including financing strategy, incentive and profit distribution, cash flow management, and global economic conditions. On November 25, Leo Zheng, founder and CEO of Lighthouse Capital, and Gao Lei, senior director of innovation finance at SPD Silicon Valley Bank, shared online insights on how to approach financing under the new normal — covering strategy, execution, cognition, and innovative financing approaches from multiple dimensions.