真格基金

Ten Thousand-Word Interview with Duolingo Co-Founder: From 12 Years for 100 Courses to 148 Courses in One Year — How AI Drives Super App Growth

When a major technological shift hits, you have to be willing to challenge every company's underlying assumptions.

A Group of Gen Z Kids Used Flyers, All-Nighters, and Scholarships to Get This Bird Game to ChinaJoy

Writing code to build a world is a kind of magic, something that defies all reason.

Venture Where No One Has Gone Before | Z News

July is drawing to a close, and we invite you to join us in witnessing the growth of our portfolio companies and what's new at ZhenFund.

Are Models and "Shells" Both Undervalued? ZhenFund's Yusen Dai's Mid-2025 AI Review --- The past six months have been a turbulent period for AI. On one hand, DeepSeek's breakthrough has reignited global enthusiasm for Chinese AI; on the other, the commercialization path for large models remains unclear, and the market is growing increasingly anxious about when AI will generate real returns. Against this backdrop, I believe it's necessary to take stock of where we stand at this mid-point in 2025. **The Core Question: Are Models and "Shells" Both Undervalued?** Over the past two years, the AI industry has cycled through several narratives: from the initial frenzy over foundation models, to the subsequent boom in AI applications ("shells"), then a period of disillusionment as applications failed to deliver, and now a renewed focus on models following DeepSeek's success. But I want to propose a contrarian view: **both models and "shells" may be simultaneously undervalued by the market right now.** This might sound paradoxical. Let me explain. **Why Models Are Undervalued** The market's current skepticism toward model companies stems largely from two concerns: the commoditization of models (will they all become undifferent

In 2025, the "Sedol moment" for industries far and wide is only just beginning.

CellX Founder Ziliang Yang: Starting from Mycelium, Let 10% of People Eat the Future First

As humanity keeps moving forward, more and more people will seek out new alternatives.

Born in the '90s, Built an AI Unicorn in Three Years: The Stubborn Teenager Behind the Windsurf Acquisition

A 50% win rate is more thrilling than a 100% success rate, because it means you're standing on the true frontier of technology.

Manus Founder Walks Through: How to Systematically Build Context Engineering for AI Agents?

If model progress is a rising tide, we want Manus to be the boat, not a pillar nailed to the seabed.

Fiverr CEO's Leaked Internal Memo and His 10,000-Word Response: 99% of AI Companies Are Froth

AI won't help ordinary developers go from 1x to 10x. It will only turn 10x developers into super developers.

Genspark Founder Jing Kun: AI Will Bring a 3-Day Work Week, Ushering in the Era of Vibe Working

We release new products almost every week, and 80% of our code is written by AI.

Zhifei Li's AI Experiment: One Person, Two Days to Build "Lark for the AI Era" — and a Renewed Faith in AGI | Z Talk

A listed-company founder's hands-on experiment offers a preview of how we'll work in the future.

A Three-Way Dialogue on AIGC Creativity, Product, and Investment: Will the Future Pixar Be Born Inside an AI Company?

CreativeFitting Founder Zhu Jiang: Building a Super Content Platform for the AI Era — Fundraising and Self-Sustaining Revenue Must Go Hand in Hand

A Conversation with Zhaogang Group's Wang Dong: One Team, One Email, Thirteen Years of Building Zhaogang --- When Wang Dong, founder of Zhaogang Group, sent that email thirteen years ago, he didn't know he was assembling what would become one of China's most resilient B2B platform teams. The email went out to a small group of former colleagues and industry contacts. The subject line was simple, almost too simple for what it would set in motion. They were going to digitize steel trading — an industry notorious for opacity, fragmentation, and old-school relationship-based dealmaking. "We were basically a group of people who understood steel but didn't understand the internet," Wang Dong recalls. "And somehow that turned out to be an advantage." The early years were brutal. Steel is a commodity business with thin margins and entrenched middlemen. The platform model required convincing buyers and sellers — many of whom had operated through personal networks for decades — to transact online. Trust had to be built transaction by transaction. What separated Zhaogang from the wave of B2B platforms that emerged in the mid-2010s was operational discipline. While competitors burned capital on rapid geographic expansion, Wang Dong's

A Long Conversation with Yusen Dai on Agents: Every Industry Will Face Its "Sedol Moment" — Is Attention Not All You Need?

A New Year Conversation with Koji: 2025 — The Critical Year for AI, the Dawn of the Agent Era

The Evolution of Coding Agents: In-Depth Conversations with Chinese and American Agent Founders, Alibaba Researchers, and Investors

A Conversation with Google DeepMind and LLM Researchers: Deconstructing OpenAI o1 and the LLM+RL New Paradigm

Acquired by a multinational after just five years in your first startup? Ren Dongni, founder of Fanqu, breaks down the game of entrepreneurship and exits --- When Ren Dongni co-founded Fanqu in 2016, the cross-border e-commerce space was already crowded with well-funded players. Five years later, the company had been acquired by a multinational corporation — a relatively swift exit by startup standards. In this conversation, Ren reflects on what it took to build and sell a company, the calculus behind taking strategic investment from a potential acquirer, and why he believes first-time founders often overcomplicate the "game" of entrepreneurship. **On the acquisition decision** "The offer came at a point where we saw the competitive landscape shifting dramatically. Cross-border e-commerce was consolidating, and the platforms with the deepest pockets were starting to squeeze out mid-tier players. We had built something valuable — a supply chain infrastructure and brand relationships that took years to cultivate — but scaling to the next level would have required capital and operational bandwidth we didn't have." The acquiring company, Ren explains, had been a strategic investor in Fanqu's Series B round. "That relationship gave them visibility into how we operated. When they approached us about a full acquisition, it wasn't

Talking AI Tech Applications, Founder Mindset, and the Scale of Entrepreneurship | A Conversation with Xiaoyu Wang of Castbox

A Chat with Xiaoyezi Founder Ye Bin: How to Learn an Instrument Painlessly? Try Going Smart!