Sinovation Ventures () is a

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

-based

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

firm founded in 2009. The firm focuses on investing in startups that use

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

technology. It was one of the first Chinese venture capital firms to establish a presence in the United States.

Background

Kai-Fu Lee Kai-Fu Lee (; born December 3, 1961) is a Taiwanese computer scientist, businessman, and writer. He is currently based in Beijing, China. Lee developed a speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition system as his Ph.D. thesis at Carnegie ...

was President of

Google China Google China is a subsidiary of Google. A popular search engine, most services offered by Google China were blocked by the Great Firewall in the People's Republic of China. In 2010, searching via all Google search sites, including Google Mobil ...

from July 2005 to September 4, 2009. A few days after resigning from his post, on September 7, 2009, he announced he would be starting a $115m

fund called "Innovation Works". His colleague, Hua Wang who was previously Head of Business Development in Google China joined him as a co-founder. In 2013, a office was opened in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

to invest in US startups. In 2016, the firm rebranded from "Innovation Works" to "Sinovation Ventures". In 2019, the firm closed its Silicon Valley office citing the

China–United States trade war The China–United States trade war () is an ongoing economic conflict between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America. In January 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on Chin ...

making it difficult to get into US deals.

Funds

Notable Investments

AdMob AdMob is a mobile advertising subsidiary of Google, originally founded by Omar Hamoui. The name AdMob is a portmanteau for "advertising on mobile". It was incorporated on April 10, 2006 while Hamoui was in business school at Wharton School. The ...

Bitmain Bitmain Technologies Ltd., is a privately owned company headquartered in Beijing, China, that designs application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips for bitcoin mining. History It was founded by Micree Zhan and Jihan Wu in 2013. Prior to ...

* Insilico Medicine *

Megvii Megvii () is a Chinese technology company that designs image recognition and deep-learning software. Based in Beijing, the company develops artificial intelligence (AI) technology for businesses and for the public sector. In 2019, the company was ...

MeituPic Meitu Xiu Xiu (Meitu Pic) ( zh, 美图秀秀) is an image editing software that is mostly used in Mainland China but is also popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is available on Google Play and App Store. It provides tools for editing photos: Filte ...

Mobike Mobike ( zh, s=摩拜单车, p=mó bài dān chē), also known as Meituanbike, founded by Beijing Mobike Technology Co., Ltd. ( zh, s=北京摩拜科技有限公司), is a fully station-less bicycle-sharing system headquartered in Beijing, China ...

* Momenta *

Niu Technologies Niu Technologies ( zh, 牛电科技; stylized as NIU) is an electric scooter company headquartered in Beijing, China. Yan Li has been its CEO and COO since December 2017. Founded in 2014 by two ex-employees of Xiaomi, it is now one of the largest ...

Planetary Resources Planetary Resources, Inc., formerly known as Arkyd Astronautics, was an American company that was formed on 1 January 2009,ARKYD Astronautics Founded http://www.planetaryresources.com/2009/01/draft-arkyd-astronautics-founded/ and reorganized an ...

* Securly * TuSimple *

VIPKID VIPKid, also known as VIPKID, is an online teaching and education company. History Founded in 2013 and formally launched in 2014 by Cindy Mi, the VIPKid platform connects paying students with teachers in the United States and Canada. Its online- ...

* WeRide * Wonder Workshop *

Zhihu Zhihu is a website where questions are created, answered, edited, and organized by the community of its users. Originally based in Chengdu, with creators being from Sichuan, China, its website, zhihu.com, was launched on January 26, 2011. The n ...

References

External links

* {{authority control Chinese companies established in 2009 Financial services companies established in 2009 Investment management companies of China Venture capital firms of China