Linear Capital Leads Angel Round in Metaverse Infrastructure Startup Qiyihuo Technology Elsewhere.News | Qiyihuo Technology, a metaverse infrastructure provider, has announced a multimillion-yuan angel funding round led by Linear Capital.

36Kr has learned that Qiyi Huo Technology (奇异火科技) announced it has raised tens of millions of RMB in an angel round led by Linear Capital, with listed company L&A Design (奥雅设计) participating as a co-investor. Following this round, the company will focus on underlying technology R&D, market expansion, and ecosystem development — marking its second successful fundraising after an earlier seed round of several million RMB.

Founded in November 2020, Qiyi Huo Technology is among the earliest Chinese companies to research NFT technology and develop integrated metaverse solutions covering authenticated digital asset minting, programming, and virtual space construction. As of May this year, it has served over 1,000 enterprises, brands, and individual art studios.

NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is a cryptographic protocol for digital assets. Unlike virtual currencies, NFTs are backed by genuine digital content, lack payment functions or monetary attributes, and instead open new market opportunities for digital content through verified ownership and trading. In China, NFTs are most widely known and deployed as "digital collectibles" — music, images, videos, and other content authenticated via blockchain technology.

In the first half of this year, digital collectibles surged on both market and platform fronts. According to Caitong Securities data, China's total monthly digital collectible issuance was just 45 million RMB in January 2022; by April, it had jumped to 300 million RMB. In early May, Li-Ning spent 2.43 million RMB to partner with foreign NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club, launching multiple co-branded products and further heating up the market.

To date, digital collectible trading platforms have exceeded 100, with major tech companies possessing underlying blockchain capabilities — including Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and JD.com — all participating. Qiyi Huo Technology's "Encrypted Space" (加密空间) platform has consistently ranked among China's top five by total collectible sales volume from January to April this year.

Its current clients span IP, designer toys, music, sports, apparel, and other sectors, helping these users achieve sustained growth in digital content sales. The company has connected with mainstream blockchain infrastructure and provides users with comprehensive underlying infrastructure through multiple payment channels (Alipay, WeChat Pay, and digital RMB), blockchain payment oracles, smart clearing and settlement systems, and virtual space technology.

Image: NFT-authenticated digital record

"We're like Shopify for small and medium e-commerce businesses — creators can focus on content creation, while our one-stop NFT building tool, Rarefy (稀台), handles the technical support," Qiyi Huo Technology founder Mars told 36Kr. "Users can achieve what they want through simple drag-and-drop." While the current digital collectible market fixates on short-term price fluctuations, he said, the company is more focused on the long-term benefits and future applications of programmable digital goods built on NFT protocols in empowering the real economy.

Image: Qiyi Huo Technology's one-stop NFT building tool Rarefy (稀台)

Mars noted that foreign financial markets are deeply intertwined with NFTs, causing frenzied price speculation to overtake what should have been a cultivated content creation ecosystem. He believes the domestic market is more pragmatic, with greater opportunity to return to NFTs' commercial value and form a rich metaverse ecosystem. The currently buzzworthy digital collectibles are just the beginning; more content creators and enterprises will come to recognize the value NFTs can bring — what are now digital collectibles will increasingly become programmable digital goods.

One telling example: Qiyi Huo Technology currently serves over 500 artists and studios. Most illustrators have experience working for client companies, but within Encrypted Space, they can freely publish their artworks and quickly monetize them through NFT-based authentication. Moreover, ownership is granted to creators at issuance, ensuring their rights are protected even upon subsequent resale — a fundamental disruption of the traditional commercial logic where artists only profit from physical sales.

Image: Featured works on the Encrypted Space platform homepage

Beyond technical services for individual creators, Qiyi Huo Technology's significant business comes from the B2B market, serving clients including the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, AW2022 Shenzhen Fashion Week, Red Star Macalline, the World Illustration Awards, Encrypted Salted Fish, and virtual online concerts. Through NFT digital collectibles, these clients monetize online traffic while also driving offline foot traffic through activities like check-in campaigns for metaverse commemorative badges — further expanding the practical commercial value of NFT digital collectibles.

Notably, Qiyi Huo Technology will also conduct deep metaverse content creation exploration with co-investor L&A Design. In May, when L&A Design launched Dream City · Qianxi City, Qiyi Huo Technology served as the metaverse infrastructure technology provider, contributing substantial underlying technology. Later this year, L&A Design will officially open China's first online-offline metaverse convergence space — The Silos (大筒仓) — which will also utilize Qiyi Huo Technology's Rarefy platform technology.

Image: L&A Design's The Silos

Investor Perspectives:

Liu Mu, Executive Director at Linear Capital: Based on the OpenDID architecture, Qiyi Huo Technology is committed to achieving NFTaaS: a SaaS tool that helps digital goods issuers build NFT independent stores, enabling users to quickly create digital goods, program scenarios, and configure virtual hosting spaces. Development efficiency is reduced from months to hours; development costs from hundreds of thousands to thousands of RMB.

Current domestic markets for IP licensing, IP adaptation, and digital goods each reach 100-billion-RMB scale. Brands and consumers have genuine demand for new channels, new products, and new experiences. The market lacks platforms that democratize the technology for minting, trading, and using digital goods. Policy differences between domestic and international markets are substantial; regulatory compliance adapted to national conditions is critical. Qiyi Huo Technology possesses major compliance certifications including national blockchain information service filings, with future product compatibility for digital RMB payments.

We believe Qiyi Huo Technology is the best startup in its field for providing NFT as a service to all brands and enterprises seeking to leverage NFT technology — at low cost and high efficiency — and represents an important cornerstone investment for Linear in the metaverse and Web3 space.

Li Fangyue, Founder of L&A Design: L&A Design and Qiyi Huo Technology first connected at the inaugural Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Metaverse Forum. After hearing Qiyi Huo Technology's metaverse presentation, Ms. Li Fangyue conducted deep due diligence on the company within less than two weeks, discovering strong synergies between Qiyi Huo Technology's business and L&A Design's subsequent digital transformation and creative design capabilities in the metaverse industry. The two parties quickly reached equity investment cooperation intentions.

This year, both Qiyi Huo Technology's own business volume and the overall NFT digital collectible market have shown explosive growth. In a short time, Qiyi Huo Technology's products have achieved notable progress, with focused efforts on underlying technology R&D, market expansion, and ecosystem development. We hope to journey alongside Qiyi Huo Technology not only in digital collectibles but throughout the entire metaverse industry.

About Linear Capital

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Linear Capital is a professional investment firm focused on "Data Intelligence" and "Frontier Technology."

Linear Capital currently manages ten funds with total AUM of approximately $2 billion.

We focus on early-stage projects in "Data Application," "Data Infrastructure," and "Frontier Technology" application areas. We typically lead angel to Series A rounds, with typical investment sizes of $3–8 million or RMB equivalent.

Our early investments include Horizon Robotics ($3B valuation), Tongdun (>$1B), Kujiale (>$1B), Sensors Data, Tezign, Rokid, Guandata, Agile Robots, and over 80 other founding teams. The combined valuation of Linear's portfolio companies is approximately $15 billion.

In the near term, Linear Capital is working to become the best "Data Intelligence Technology Fund," and in the long term, to build the most influential "Frontier Technology Application Fund."