Cloud Service Engine FORK AI Raises Tens of Millions of RMB in Pre-A Round | Led by Oasis Capital

FORK AI, a MarTech startup focused on providing intelligent customer acquisition services for cloud service providers, recently completed a Pre-A round of tens of millions of RMB, with Oasis Capital as the sole investor. The funds will be used to upgrade its product and expand commercialization. Beyond its own sales channels, FORK AI will also leverage CRM vendors as a channel for customer acquisition.

Fork AI founder and CEO Lishi He said: "As an emerging investment firm, Oasis Capital has both the sharpness and vigor of top-tier entrepreneurs and the professionalism of a large company — making it the best partner for early-stage founders. Our collaboration is not just about supporting a business, but about nurturing and sustaining a kind of vitality that continues to grow."

An investment lead at Oasis Capital said: "Everyone is familiar with how consumer internet companies use data for precise customer acquisition. While enterprise services appear to be flourishing, in reality many companies still rely on crude,粗放 methods to acquire customers. FORK AI has seized on the key insight of using data to enhance understanding of customer needs. Lishi He was part of the early founding team at Qiniu Cloud and brings years of experience in domestic enterprise service companies as well as insight into the global development of enterprise services. Oasis looks forward to growing alongside the FORK AI team, which has a global vision, to empower enterprise services."

The Fork Stack intelligent customer acquisition engine provides cloud service providers with precise sales leads, narrowing the acquisition target from a sea of leads to over 8 million apps across five major global app stores.

When enterprises or individual developers build software, beyond developing specific features according to their own intentions, they often use free open-source SDKs for certain通用 functions or purchase relevant SDKs from cloud service providers. SDK (Software Development Kit) is a collection of related documentation, examples, and tools developed by different categories of cloud service providers for specific types of software. Enterprises or individual developers install third-party SDKs through APIs to avoid重复 developing通用 functions and shorten development cycles.

As shown in the figure below, the enterprise-developed Xiaohongshu app uses three SDKs from cloud service provider Tencent. The Tencent QQ SDK and Tencent WeChat SDK enable login to Xiaohongshu using their respective accounts; the Tencent Bugly SDK monitors app bugs.

Fork Stack intelligent customer acquisition engine product screenshot

FORK AI has built a cloud-native通用 SaaS product — the Fork Stack intelligent customer acquisition engine — aimed at solving the precise customer acquisition problem for cloud service providers. The choice of this赛道 is tied to founder Lishi He's professional background. He previously served as a commercialization product manager and customer success lead at Qiniu Cloud, a third-party independent cloud computing and data services company. In supporting the sales team, he discovered that the prevailing sales funnel approach to customer acquisition and the technical gap between salespeople and customers' technical leads had become key factors constraining cloud service providers' acquisition efficiency.

The mainstream customer acquisition method involves cloud service providers placing ads through SEM (search engine marketing) and DSP (demand-side platforms) to obtain sales leads, with salespeople claiming customers from the CRM and inquiring about procurement needs one by one. However, because the leads are often not precise enough, this results in wasted human resources and low sales efficiency.

The technical gap arises because cloud services technology is complex, making it difficult for junior salespeople to accurately grasp the actual needs of enterprise developers. This creates an awkward situation where technical leads struggle to decide when presented with service proposals by salespeople.

Based on these pain points, the Fork Stack intelligent customer acquisition engine uses data mining and reverse engineering to拆解 the SDK distribution and API changes behind applications, breaking down the technical gap between cloud service providers and enterprise developers' technical leads. It uses visualization to help cloud service providers precisely identify developer needs, combined with business registration information to辅助判断 sales opportunities and improve acquisition efficiency.

Specifically, the Fork Stack intelligent customer acquisition engine covers five major app stores. Through data mining and reverse application拆解 technology, it analyzes the SDKs and APIs behind applications, visually displaying how many apps a given company entity has developed, which app stores they are distributed across, the SDK composition statistics for each app, and which cloud service provider each SDK belongs to. It also shows the installation and uninstallation changes of an app's SDKs over time, thereby monitoring the app's cloud service needs.

Fork Stack intelligent customer acquisition engine product screenshot

"The value of this model lies in using the logic of precise customer acquisition to help cloud service providers narrow their focus from a sea of leads to 800 million apps from 2.5 million developers across five major app stores," Lishi He explained.

For marketing departments, it enables industry analysis and generation of developer customer leads through combined multi-dimensional data filtering. This includes accurately统计 market share of a cloud service provider's SDK products in their domain, competitor customer profiles, and market distribution analysis, to挖掘 the next market growth point for enterprise products. It also supports building and exporting target customer lists, competitor customer lists, and performance analysis.

For sales departments, it can filter different developers' app distribution status and analyze target developers' app ranking changes to estimate download volume changes. By examining SDK composition and analysis of existing SDK cloud service providers, it can infer changes in cloud service needs and scale, enabling customized sales strategies.

For customer success departments, it enables real-time understanding of developer customers' market performance and SDK dynamics, informing renewal, repurchase, and win-back运营 strategies.

Compared to existing professional research firms that rely on survey interviews and desktop research, the Fork Stack intelligent engine's advantages lie in the comprehensiveness, objectivity, and real-time nature of its data presentation.

Additionally, the developer details page helps cloud service providers combine enterprise business registration information to辅助判断 sales opportunities and improve sales efficiency.

According to Lishi He, "Unlike traditional sales funnel customer acquisition, FORK AI is currently the only company on the market that uses standardized products to help cloud service providers improve acquisition efficiency at scale." While this approach has clear merits, it also means a smaller market space and certain difficulties in market education. Lishi He shared his views on this:

First, because the approach is so novel, it currently requires considerable explanation during product recommendations. However, once cloud service providers understand the product logic, they readily accept it.

Second, the FORK AI team has deep understanding and insight into cloud service providers' needs. The product model has basically been validated through实操 verification with several customers, and the team has accumulated considerable experience in industry know-how, technology, and service.

Third, going forward, FORK AI will continue to increase standardization of the cloud service supply chain, connecting bilateral demand to provide developers with security analysis services面向 cloud service providers, ultimately achieving a model similar to BOSS Zhipin where both supply and demand sides can select each other, further promoting cloud service provider sales conversion.

Currently, FORK AI's primary revenue source is SaaS subscription fees, including enterprise定制 services and individual subscription services, with enterprise定制 services charged by data volume. Last year it achieved revenue of nearly one million RMB, with an average customer price of around 300,000 RMB, and all customers have renewed.

The team, in its early stages, numbers nearly 20 people, primarily from excellent domestic and international cloud computing companies, outstanding open-source communities, and cybersecurity experts, with an average of over ten years of industry experience.

Source: 36kr, author: Sijin Wu, editor: Yutong Wang

Nurturing Vitality

What do you think vitality is?

I know that I exist in this life for something meaningful to happen. We abandon other possibilities in life and submit to a single goal, and this is what gives us朴素,磅礴 strength. With this strength, we continued奔波 seeking partnerships under the shadow of the pandemic. The night we serendipitously encountered Oasis, I realized — this is the vitality we share.

— Lishi He, Founder and CEO of Fork AI

Oasis Capital is a new-generation venture capital institution in China, dedicated to discovering the most vital entrepreneurs of the next decade and growing alongside them to create long-term value. "Nurturing vitality" is Oasis's vision and mission. This vitality is both the direction of structural transformation in the era and the force of entrepreneurs' resilience and evolution.

Oasis Capital focuses on early and growth-stage investments, with individual investments ranging from $3 million to $30 million, concentrating on technology-enabled services in healthcare, enterprise services, and other sectors, to助力 China's technology-driven new service upgrade.