Former vivo star product manager Song Ziwei's AI hardware startup V-Light bags over 100 million yuan in funding, Unity Ventures continues to follow on
Unity Ventures remains bullish on opportunities in AI hardware and globalization.
Unity Ventures portfolio company V-Light recently completed a Pre-A round of over RMB 100 million, co-led by HSG and BlueRun Ventures, with follow-on investment from Ant Group Strategic Investment, CDH Investments, and Anyu Capital. Existing investor Unity Ventures continued to increase its stake.
Unity Ventures was V-Light's angel-round investor. We believe that as Physical AI advances in the real world, multimodal entry points and contextual interactions will open up ever more possibilities — and the full-length mirror represents a刚需, high-frequency, premium AI hardware form factor. Founder Song Ziwei comes from a product management background, has shipped products in competitive markets, and brings fashion sense, traffic intuition, and marketing thinking — a founder profile highly aligned with this赛道. Unity Ventures remains bullish on AI hardware and globalization opportunities. Founders, we'd love to hear from you!
An entrepreneurship wave in AI hardware is sweeping through the consumer electronics space. Former mobile industry executives like Thomas Wang, previously Xiaomi's China marketing general manager, and Ma Ji, former general manager of Xiaomi's internet business division, have jumped into founding companies. Product forms include AI sleep hardware, AI earphones, and AI imaging hardware, among others.
In October 2024, vivo star product manager Song Ziwei announced on Weibo that she was entering the AI intelligent hardware space as an entrepreneur.
Intelligent Emergence has learned that Song Ziwei's startup V-Light will build an intelligent hardware product matrix centered on a fashion AI Agent. According to people familiar with the matter, the company is internally developing its first AI-native fashion terminal, with a floor mirror as the likely hardware form. Its fashion intelligent agent will deeply integrate users' daily mirror-checking, outfit coordination, and other high-frequency scenarios.
V-Light recently completed a Pre-A round of over RMB 100 million, co-led by HSG and BlueRun Ventures, with follow-on investment from Ant Group Strategic Investment, CDH Investments, and Anyu Capital. Existing investor Unity Ventures continued to increase its stake. The raised capital will focus on talent acquisition, intelligent hardware R&D, vertical model training, and landing key application scenarios for the fashion Agent.
People familiar with the matter say that since founding the company, Song Ziwei has maintained "a very fast pace." As early as five months ago, V-Light had already completed an angel round of tens of millions of RMB from CASSTAR and Unity Ventures.
Song Ziwei is a high-profile figure in hard tech. Her moves — from mobile phones to automobiles to launching an AI hardware startup — have continued to draw attention.
As an early founding member of vivo's iQOO brand, Song Ziwei led the end-to-end product definition, R&D, and launch of multiple hit product series from scratch. The rapid growth of iQOO phones subsequently made her famous within tech circles, earning her the industry moniker "star product manager of the mobile phone industry."
By September 2023, Song Ziwei had left vivo to join Li Auto. The transition from phones to cars, and years of deep engagement in consumer electronics and premium intelligent hardware, gave her full-cycle hands-on experience in user insight, product definition, R&D, supply chain management, and go-to-market execution.
In the AI hardware entrepreneurship boom of the past two years, "AI + fashion" intelligent hardware represents a distinctive direction.
Take the floor mirror as an example. Its particularity lies in being a high-frequency fashion entry point to begin with, and one that users already have spontaneous habits around — applying makeup, coordinating outfits, self-presentation in front of the mirror. According to Fortune Business Insights data, the global "AI + fashion" market has already surpassed $2.5 billion in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 40%.
Most "AI + fashion" intelligent hardware on the market remains function-oriented, lacking deep mining of fashion and aesthetic needs across different scenarios. People familiar with the matter indicate that Song Ziwei's V-Light does not aim to build a purely tool-like AI hardware product. Instead, it will give the floor mirror perceptual capabilities, continuously learning and accumulating user preferences to deliver personalized fashion advice and services — "a contextualized, emotionally resonant AI hardware product."
Alongside the new funding, V-Light's core team has already been assembled, with most members having experience shipping tens of millions of units in ToC hardware projects.
V-Light's Chief Technology Officer is Xiao Fangxu, formerly a core executive in vivo's AI division, with deep expertise in on-device AI technology and large model applications. Its Chief Design Officer is a former senior design director at BMW and vivo. Core team members come from Li Auto, Baichuan, Insta360, Anker, and other companies.
Source: Intelligent Emergence
Author: Qiu Xiaofen
