Former Alibaba Group executive-led Vision Knight Capital on Tuesday announced that it has raised over 4 billion yuan ($565.6 million) for new investment vehicles with the backing of multiple local government guidance funds in China.
Vision Knight is led by its chairman and founding partner, David Wei, who served a five-year stint as CEO of Alibaba before founding the investment firm in 2011.
The firm has raised the multi-billion-yuan funds from local government guidance funds across Changsha, Ningbo, Tianjin, and other cities in eastern China’s Yangtze River Delta.
Its latest fundraising was also supported by returning limited partners (LPs), along with listed corporations and RMB-denominated funds-of-funds (FOFs), said the Shanghai-based investment firm in its latest WeChat post.
The new funds brought Vision Knight’s total assets under management (AUM) across both RMB and US dollars to nearly 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion), it said.
Known as an investment firm focusing on the consumer and IT sectors, Vision Knight will invest these new funds in more “forward-looking” industries, including artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, new consumption trends, cross-border e-commerce opportunities, and life sciences.
The goal of the new funds is to build an ecosystem to “systematically leverage” the structural opportunities presented by AI software and hardware advancements in China and the US, the restructuring of the global supply chain, and emerging new consumption behaviours.
The fundraising comes after Vision Knight has built a portfolio of world-renowned brands, such as consumer electronics maker Anker Innovations Technology and Pop Mart, the maker of the viral Labubu dolls.
It claims to have fuelled the growth of companies, including over 30 unicorns, which are startups valued at over $1 billion, and decacorns, or those valued at over $10 billion.
