The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Apr 2026

Founded in March 2023, Shengshu Technology builds foundational or "world" models across three areas: multimodal generation, real-time interaction, and physical-world actions. Its Vidu Q model targets professional video and content production use cases in comics, advertising, e-commerce, and film. The Vidu S1 model enables voice-controlled video generation at 540P and 25FPS while running efficiently on consumer-grade graphics cards. In December 2025 the company open-sourced Motus, presented as a unified world model for perception, prediction, and action, and its Motubrain robot control model reached a 95.8% success rate on the RoboTwin 2.0 benchmark. The company announced a $500 million funding round to support continued model research and technological innovation.

Participated · Series C · Aug 2019

Founded in 2011 by Vamsi Krishna, Anand Prakash, Saurabh Saxena and Pulkit Jain, Vedantu began as a purely online tutoring platform and has since evolved into a hybrid K-12 education provider with more than 100 centres complementing its digital classes. The company employs over 1,200 teachers and serves in excess of 200,000 paid students. Vedantu reached unicorn status in September 2021 after a $100 million round led by ABC World Asia. Management is now concentrating on expanding both organically and through acquisitions, while enhancing its technology stack with artificial intelligence and adaptive learning content. An upcoming external equity round and secondary transaction are also being pursued to give early investors liquidity and to strengthen the balance sheet. These steps are intended to position the company for a potential public listing in 2027.

Participated · Series C · Jul 2019

Kaishu Jianggushi (Kaishu Story) is a Beijing-based online content provider that offers audio children's stories through its app and WeChat. The company provides both free and paid audio content and allows users to join group purchases of products including books, toys, and telescopes. Kaishu Jianggushi was founded in 2014 by Wang Kai, a former CCTV presenter. Financially, the firm recently closed a USD 66 million Series C+ round led by Trust Bridge Partners and joined by Singapore-based Temasek, with prior investor Loyal Valley Capital also contributing. That new investment came only months after the company closed a USD 50 million Series C round led by Baidu in July 2019. Kaishu Story is a Beijing-based podcast production studio founded in 2014 by Wang Kai that focuses on children's bedtime stories. The studio has produced more than 9,000 stories and attracted over 30 million listeners. Content on Kaishu Story's own app has been played more than 4 billion times and the average listener's daily playback time has reached 50 minutes. The company finished its last funding round in March 2018 with a valuation of RMB 1.6 billion (USD 232.6 million) after raising RMB 156 million (USD 22.68 million). It has closed a USD 50 million Series C led by Baidu, with New Oriental, TAL Education and Shanghai Kunyan Investment joining as co-investors. Baidu plans to tap the studio to introduce children's educational content across its apps and platforms, notably on its smart speaker system where it sold about 3.3 million units in Q1 2019.

Participated · Series C · Jul 2019

Minerva Project provides higher education offerings via the Minerva Schools at KGI and other educational partners, using a scaffolded curriculum that equips students with cognitive tools and core competencies across disciplines. Its methodology is based on research on the science of learning and is enhanced by proprietary active-learning technology. The Minerva Forum was built to facilitate interaction via live video, enabling professors to conduct intensive, engaged classroom experiences and provide relevant feedback to ensure progress against student learning outcomes. The company will use the Series C capital to accelerate access to its learning experiences through partnerships with universities and corporations. In the financing Minerva raised $57M, bringing total capital raised to date to in excess of $128M. The company emphasizes proven pedagogical practices and tools to support partner institutions' delivery of its curriculum. Minerva Project operates the Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute, a highly selective undergraduate program whose founding class commenced courses in September 2014 with students from 14 countries and territories. The curriculum emphasizes development of key habits of mind and foundational concepts rather than knowledge dissemination, with no introductory level classes and live interactive seminars of 19 students or fewer led by accomplished professors via a proprietary technology platform. Students live together in global student residences in major metropolitan cities, rotating up to seven times during their four years while classes are supplemented by cultural, social and civic experiences. Tuition is $10,000; the school received 2,464 applications from students in 96 countries and territories and accepted every student who passed its high admissions bar, resulting in a 2.8% acceptance rate. Led by founder, chairman and CEO Ben Nelson, Minerva intends to use new funds to scale operations. A representative from TAL Education Group will join Minerva's board as part of the financing. The Minerva Project is building an online liberal-arts university that emphasizes an “extraordinarily rigorous” curriculum and meritocratic admissions. It plans a four-year program delivered primarily online with small live, synchronous classes of 10–25 students and a global student body. First-year students study in their home countries; from the sophomore year onward students are encouraged to live in a new city each semester, and multilingual competency is expected by graduation. Founder and CEO Ben Nelson (former Snapfish CEO) says tuition will be about half that of top colleges, and the school intends to incentivize top professors via a “Nobel Prize for teaching” while hiring Ph.D. educators focused on teaching. The project promises post-graduation support and lifelong networks rather than a traditional alumni fundraising model. Financially, it has secured major startup funding to support launch and operations, and plans to accept its first class in 2014.

Participated · Series A · Nov 2018

KaDa Story operates a digital content platform focused on personalized reading services for children aged 0–9. The company provides tailor-made services and one-stop children’s content solutions for publishers, kindergartens, public libraries, smart terminals and other enterprises. It partners with more than 200 organizations, including over 160 leading Chinese children’s content agencies such as China Children’s Press & Publication Group, Daylight Publishing House, Jieli Publishing House, Wanda Kidsplace and Alpha Group, and more than 40 international agencies including The Walt Disney Company, Groupe Bayard and Oxford University Press. KaDa Story's content reaches 162 countries and regions, spanning developed markets like the US, Japan, France and Australia as well as developing countries such as Sierra Leone, Malawi and Niger. Led by CEO and founder Sally Xie, the company plans to use new funding to expand global adoption and to upgrade content, user experience and distribution channels. Financially, KaDa Story secured nearly RMB100m in a Series A+ financing round to support those initiatives.