Zhongguancun Science City (ZGC Science City), a local government investment firm in Beijing, will invest in funds managed by Qiming Venture Partners, Monolith Management, and Meituan’s DragonBall Capital, among two others, amid the growing prominence of state capital in the country’s deeptech investment scene.
ZGC Science City is a platform built to service and finance tech companies in Zhongguancun, a technology hub in northwestern Beijing’s Haidian District. It also revealed commitments to funds managed by CAS Investment, and SEE Fund, marking the expansion of its general partner (GP) network.
A public disclosure by the state investor shows that the five new funds include Qiming’s eighth RMB tech fund, Monolith’s new venture-focused vehicle, DragonBall Capital’s fourth RMB fund, CAS Investment’s fourth equity investment fund, and a new vehicle under SEE Fund, a Tsinghua University-backed, early-stage venture capital (VC) firm.
The partnerships underscore the growing ties between state capital investors (or limited partners) and fund managers (or general partners) that were historically known for raising US-dollar funds.
Established in May 2019 and bankrolled by the Haidian government, ZGC Science City is set to make these fund commitments through its Science City’s Science and Technology Growth Investment Guidance Fund Phase III.
As the third in its growth investment fund-of-funds (FOF) series, the Phase III fund targets to deploy up to 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) into deeptech industries, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), health & medicines, semiconductors, embodied intelligence, new-generation IT, and commercial aerospace, with a mandate to strengthen Zhongguancun’s status as ‘China’s Silicon Valley’.
This new batch of fund partnerships comes just months after the Haidian government officially introduced the Phase III fund this February, following the launch of its Phase I fund in 2021 and Phase II fund in 2024.
The Phase III fund brings the overall assets under management (AUM) of this growth-focused FoF series to 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion).
The series of funds aims to partner with investment firms to back tech companies from as early as their seed and angel financing to buyout and secondary transactions. Its existing fund partners include the likes of Shunwei Capital, Legend Capital, FreesFund, Unity Ventures, and MPCi (previously Matrix Partners China).
Its partner funds are expected to invest in and support tech startups and companies grown out of Zhongguancun, a sprawling science park of 174 square kilometres (67.2 square miles) and home to China’s top universities and research institutions like Tsinghua University, Peking University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Now widely recognised as the No.1 tech hub in mainland China, Zhongguancun hosts over 10,000 tech companies and 49 unicorns, which are private companies with a valuation of over $1 billion. Among the unicorns are 26 AI companies, according to official data from the science park.
A total of 74 large language models (LLM), or about 30% of made-in-China LLMs, are recorded in Zhongguancun. The science park is also home to 101 AI professionals who made it to the list of ‘AI 2000 Most Influential Scholars’, representing 40% of the country’s top AI talent, the data shows.
