127 startups founded by Tsinghua alumni, all backed by this one fund
On average, one out of every six companies ZhenFund has invested in comes from Tsinghua University.
Ten years ago, ZhenFund made its first investment in a Tsinghua alumnus. Today, the firm has backed 127 companies founded by Tsinghua graduates. On average, one in every six ZhenFund portfolio companies is Tsinghua-affiliated.
Click the video to watch the story of Tsinghua founders × ZhenFund
Starting with the Class of 1985, ZhenFund's Tsinghua founders span nearly four decades of enrollment. We've backed 80 alumni who entered Tsinghua between 2001 and 2010, including Momenta CEO Xudong Cao and Hesai Technology CEO Yifan Li.
Yusen Dai, ZhenFund's managing partner, is one of them. In 2008, Dai graduated from Tsinghua's Department of Industrial Engineering, then dropped out of Stanford to return to China and co-found Jumei Youpin, which received ZhenFund backing. Four years later, Jumei went public on the NYSE, and at 27, Dai became the youngest co-founder of a NYSE-listed company in history.
In 2017, he joined ZhenFund as a partner and has since invested in a wave of Tsinghua-affiliated founders including Moonshot AI's Zhilin Yang, Infinigence AI's Lixue Xia, Orienspace's Song Yao, and Ningyi Xu of Huixi Intelligent.
ZhenFund believes young people have the power to change the world. Among Tsinghua alumni entrepreneurs who enrolled between 2011 and 2024, we've invested in 41 — most of them post-90s and Gen Z founders with distinctive vision and technical depth.
Link-U Technology founder Yudi Qin, born in 1997, earned his bachelor's in vehicle engineering at Tsinghua in 2015 and entered the direct PhD program in 2019, winning the university's top scholarship. He started his first company as an undergrad and launched his second during his PhD, meeting ZhenFund investment vice president Yini Wang — also a Tsinghua alum — at Wudaokou's Richang Restaurant. That led to ZhenFund's angel investment.
By sector, ZhenFund's Tsinghua portfolio is concentrated in consumer, AI, healthcare, enterprise services, media & entertainment, hardware & robotics, and semiconductors — the top seven categories. AI, chips, and hard tech account for roughly half of all Tsinghua investments.
As one of Tsinghua's oldest and most established engineering departments, the Department of Electronic Engineering accounts for 21% of ZhenFund's Tsinghua founders. Lidong Zhao of Enflame Technology, Song Yao of Orienspace, and Lixue Xia of Infinigence AI are all EE alumni. Infinigence AI initiator Professor Yu Wang is the department's current chair and tenured professor, having also earned his bachelor's and PhD there.
Computer Science, at 19%, is the second-largest department. Under the AI wave, "the expensive department" — as CS is nicknamed — has produced a surge of AI and frontier-tech founders including Colossal-AI's Yang You and Moonshot AI's Zhilin Yang.
"Self-discipline and social commitment" — the Tsinghua motto — is the shared imprint on these founders. More and more Tsinghua alumni are carving out new territory in their fields, taking up the torch of entrepreneurship and ushering in a great era of "when the stars shine."
ZhenFund looks forward to seeing even more Tsinghua faces in the coming waves of tech entrepreneurship. We're here waiting for you.
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