Beijing May Be the Best City in the World for Venture Funding
A hotbed for startup companies of every kind, Beijing is also home to some of the world’s most promising up-and-comers. In fact, the list of biggest fundraisers of 2019 was absolutely dominated by the Chinese capital, with over half of the top-ten chart comprised of Beijing-based companies.
Just who are these savvy startups, and how did they manage to convince investors to cash in on their business to the tune of more than USD half a billion? Read on to gain a little entrepreneurial inspiration from these local unicorns.
6) Horizon Robotics
2019 funding: USD 600 million
Yu Kai was the head of Baidu’s Institute of Deep Learning, making him one of the world’s topmost figures in artificial intelligence development. He left Baidu in 2015 to apply his knowledge of one of the most complex software fields to a competitive field of hardware – processor chips. His company, Horizon Robotics, primarily designs chips to power self-driving systems, so you might one day find yourself in an unmanned DiDi with Horizon hardware inside. This latest round of funding was mainly provided by the Chinese subsidiary of the SK Group, a South Korean conglomerate, along with a few Chinese automakers.
5) NetEase Cloud Music
2019 funding: USD 700 million
If you haven’t already downloaded the app, there is a good chance that you have seen songs being shared in WeChat via NetEase Music. It is one of the top three most popular music streaming apps in China, all of which run on a freemium model comparable to Spotify. With its growing user base steadily growing since its founding in 2013, the company earned significant investments from the likes of Alibaba and Baidu. The investments put its total amount raised at about RMB 1.4 billion, or a little more than one-tenth of the total value of NetEase, which is involved in everything from gaming to e-commerce.
4) MEGVII
2019 funding: USD 750 million
Another company working with artificial intelligence, MEGVII creates a product that is just as, if not more controversial than self-driving cars: facial recognition. A growing sector that we're ever-more familiar with in Beijing these days, one thing is for certain: like it or not, facial recognition is not going away any time soon, and that is exactly why companies like Abu Dhabi Investments and Alibaba see big yuan signs when they look at MEGVII, which sells its technology to both private and public entities.
3) JD Health
2019 funding: USD 1 billion
You probably think of JD as an alternative to Taobao with somewhat more reliable products. However, like many giants of the Chinese business world, JD has its fingers in many pies, and with these latest investments in its pharmaceutical product company, it has now launched a total of four subsidiaries that have achieved unicorn status (the others being JD Logistics, JD digits, and Dada-JD Daojia). What’s more, this latest billion is the cherry on top of a previous six billion in funding, making JD health the second most valuable startup in the world. All this came after Xi Lijun, who formerly headed JD’s local lifestyle service group, was appointed to lead the subsidiary.
2) Chehaoduo
2019 funding: USD 1.5 billion
Meaning “Many Cars,” Chehaoduo is an e-commerce platform that has gained a commanding control over China’s used car market by using big data to analyze car value. But more than just an app, the company has over 600 offline stores in the country. Its success caught the attention of the Japanese investment company Softbank, which is known for making big bets on promising companies. With USD 1.5 billion from Softbank’s Vision Fund, Chehaoduo plans on disrupting the consumer car market even more than it already has.
1) Kuaishou Technology
2019 funding: USD 3 billion
It might not be as big as its competitor Douyin (TikTok) just yet, but the video-sharing app Kuaishou had the best year in funding out not just Beijing-based startups, but out of every startup in the world. Additionally, even though it is based in Beijing, it has gained popularity with users outside of tier-one cities, climbing to 200 million active daily users since its founding in 2011. An array of investors have been attracted to Kuaishou's platform, including Tencent, which harbors something of a vendetta against TikTok, proving that there's nothing like a little competition to secure big funding.
READ: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: 2019's Most Viral Blogs on theBeiijinger.com
Images: Austin Distel via Unsplash, AI authority, Dribbble, RFA, Theinformation
