Led · Series C · Apr 2021

YIAUTO operates an online marketplace for car trading and allied services. The article reports the company has secured $70 million in a Series C financing. The round was led by SIG China, an affiliate of U.S.-based Susquehanna International Group (SIG). The report does not provide details on revenue, user metrics, founding year, or location. No information on product roadmap or planned use of proceeds was disclosed in the article.

Participated · Series B · Apr 2021

StoneWise operates a platform that combines a molecular design software module with a knowledge-graph driven approach to accelerate small‑molecule drug discovery. The company says its dual-engine (molecular design platform + knowledge graph) has been validated across multiple projects, including first-in-class and fast-follow programs and difficult targets such as disordered proteins. Its molecular design software is described as the first domestically commercialized AI drug-molecule design product and has been procured by multiple top research institutions and pharmaceutical companies. StoneWise reports that some collaborations produced breakthrough experimental results and helped partners realize hundreds of millions of dollars in downstream commercial value. The company plans to use new funding to recruit global talent, accelerate AI technology iteration, and consolidate industrialization and platform deployment. StoneWise was founded in 2018 and emphasizes continued partnerships and product-led expansion in early drug discovery. Founded in 2018, 望石智慧 develops an AI platform for early drug discovery that covers knowledge mining, scaffold discovery and selection, molecular generation and design, and property prediction. Its two core products are an intelligent molecular design platform for scaffold-based generation and optimization, and a knowledge graph integrating billions of data points on diseases, targets, and small molecules. The team blends AI, computational chemistry, and computational biology expertise and has partnerships with listed innovators and top research institutes, including BeyondSpring, Peking University Medical School, and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. The company operates and conducts R&D in both China and the U.S., and is recruiting senior scientific and management talent to accelerate industrial integration. Technically it focuses on improving underlying algorithms (reinforcement learning, autoencoder networks, quantum chemistry integration) to raise barriers and enable wider pharma adoption. Financially, the company recently completed a near-$10M Series A financing to support platform iteration and market expansion.

Led · Series A · May 2019

Launched in 2016 as a streetwear platform, DoNew pivoted to focus on sneaker resale and now operates a trading-style marketplace with charts showing price fluctuations similar to StockX. The company is vertically integrated, offering warehousing for sellers and buyers; storage fees are waived when goods sell via DoNew and a small per-pair fee is charged for sales on third-party platforms. DoNew plans to introduce pre-sale shoe coupons and spot coupons that let users lock trades at set prices before releases and to trade those coupons on-platform. The firm was on track for RMB 50 million (USD 7.2 million) in GMV in May, with an average sneaker price of RMB 1,500, and expects to hit RMB 10 million (USD 1.45 million) in weekly GMV once coupon features launch. It has about 2 million social-media fans, and roughly 80% of users were born in 1995 or later, with a predominantly male user base; the company aims to funnel these followers to its app.

Participated · Series B · Dec 2018

Fresh Buddy is a Chinese social e-commerce app that sells and delivers vegetables and fruits and uses a multilevel revenue-sharing scheme to pay users cash rewards for recruiting others. The app is an incubated project of Miss Fresh, a Tencent-backed service; founder Zeng Bin owns 40.79% of Fresh Buddy and Miss Fresh holds an 11.8% stake. Fresh Buddy says it sources directly from farms to bypass distribution layers and cut costs, and it leverages WeChat for social reach and user recruitment. The company debuted in April, raised $30M in a Series A in July, and reported 70% month-over-month growth to reach 30 million unique mobile installs in October, per iResearch. Fresh Buddy plans to use the new proceeds to strengthen its supply chain and logistics center. Its model targets small-town consumers with cash incentives and heavy WeChat-driven viral distribution.

Led · Series B · Apr 2018

Castbox is a podcast app that leverages natural language processing and machine learning to provide personalized recommendations and an in-audio search that transcribes and indexes audio. Its platform helps users discover podcasts by searching episode transcripts rather than relying solely on titles or show notes. The app has been installed 15 million times, sees 1.8 million daily users, and reports a 50% retention rate; U.S. users average 113 minutes per day while Chinese users average 12 subscriptions each. Castbox is expanding into original programming with its “Castbox Originals” slate (examples include “Off Track with Hinch and Rossi” and “Heard Well Now”) and will monetize those shows with advertising. The company is investing new capital into original programming, strategic creator partnerships, and improvements to usability, content discovery, and personalization. Castbox relocated its headquarters to San Francisco while maintaining an engineering office in Beijing and employs 52 full-time employees. CastBox is a podcast player for iOS and Android that combines a recommendation engine with an NLP-based in-audio search feature, allowing keyword and topic searches across over 50 million episodes. The search currently supports English and the company says it will perfect the feature before expanding to other languages. CastBox reports its player has been downloaded more than eight million times and that most users are English speakers. The startup plans to begin co-producing and releasing original content this quarter and intends to offer a premium tier as part of its monetization strategy. Founder and CEO Xiaoyu Wang started CastBox in early 2016 and the company is headquartered in Beijing with offices in Hong Kong and San Francisco. CastBox will use its recent funding for marketing, producing original content, and hiring engineers.