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The Venture Codex

Alpha Startup Fund

Beijing, China

Overview

WHO WE ARE Alpha Startups is founded by a three-time founder and entrepreneur who led the company's NASDAQ IPO, and an early investor who has incubated 60+ Internet companies in four years and co-managing partner of the most successful incubator in China. From Day 1, we have structured Alpha Startups in a unique way to help founders grow from 0 to 1. We handpicked the fund investors who enhance our industry resources. We staffed the team with data scientists, industry BD veterans, marketing gurus and community experts. No investment analysts. We partner with Internet platform companies to give our founders unique advantages. We provide startups free workspace and have made numerous detailed designs for Alpha Startup office to serve founding teams. WHAT WE DO We provide the first institutional capital to startups. However, capital is the least that we can help founders with. In fact, if the only thing we can help is investing money, we will not invest. This is because capital is not what matters the most to a successful startup in its first 12 to 18 months. At Alpha Startups, we help founders build a MVP faster, to acquire unfair growth advantages by leveraging Alpha's BD and marketing resources, to learn rapidly from a close founder community and seasoned mentors, and to secure next round capital with well-planned strategies and demo events. Unlike other multi-stage investors, Alpha Startups is laser-focused on seed and angel stage. This focus enables us to devote all our institutional resources to solving the unique challenges faced by founders in their first 12 months. This focus also gives our founders the freedom to choose any 3rd party VCs for next round without any conflict of interest.

Total investments
4
Lead investments
0
Investments · 12mo
2
Active investors
1

Sector focus

  • Financial Services
  • Venture Capital
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Investment portfolio

  • Looki

    Participated · Series A · Jan 2026

    Founded in May 2024 by two Carnegie Mellon University alumni, Looki positions itself as an AI-native hardware brand. Its first product, the Looki L1, is marketed as the world’s first wearable multimodal AI device and debuted internationally in August 2025, with the initial few-thousand-unit inventory selling out quickly. A China-specific version launched on JD.com that December, bringing cumulative global sales to nearly 10,000 units. The founding team includes veterans from Google, Amazon, Qualcomm, ByteDance and leading autonomous-driving companies, giving the company deep expertise in AI algorithms, product design and hardware engineering. Over roughly one year the company has completed four funding rounds, the most recent being an over $20 million Series A. Capital from these rounds is expected to fund further product development and expanded manufacturing capacity. No revenue figures were disclosed in the article.

  • Nebula Brands

    Participated · Series B · Dec 2021

    Nebula Brands is a Beijing-based Amazon aggregator that acquires and operates third-party Fulfillment by Amazon vendors. The company focuses on aggregating FBA sellers and strengthening their operations to scale. Founded only in May, Nebula has already acquired one vendor and is on track to close several more deals by the end of the year. It runs a team of over 50 employees in China with on-the-ground sourcing, underwriting, and operating experience. Financially, Nebula closed a Series B of more than $50 million and has raised roughly $60 million to date. The startup is competing with other roll-ups such as Berlin Brands Group, Razor Group and Thrasio.

  • Whale

    Participated · Series B · Jan 2021

    Whale builds an AI Operating System (AIOS) for enterprise operations based on its proprietary Business World Model (BWM), which interprets camera, sensor, and audio signals similar to how LLMs process text. Its product suite includes SpaceSight (physical space intelligence), Echo (voice and audio intelligence), Lume (content distribution), Alivia (workflow automation and intelligent agents), Harbor (knowledge management and compliance), and Novus (AI infrastructure and governance). Whale serves more than 1,600 enterprises in 45+ countries and manages over 600,000 edge AI nodes globally across industries including retail, automotive, F&B, manufacturing, and financial services. Headquartered in Singapore, the company is scaling deployments across North America and APAC with plans for MENA and Europe. Whale recently raised a Series C round that now totals $100 million, which it says will fund global expansion, team growth, deeper partnerships, and expanded platform integrations.

Team