A resume from a big tech company doesn't guarantee a smooth path to financing, but in February, these five ByteDance-affiliated companies did secure a substantial amount of funding.
While the market is still debating whether the "halo of big tech companies" is fading, a group of ByteDance - affiliated entrepreneurs have provided an answer with real - money financing data.
In the Chinese venture capital market in February 2026, there is a phenomenon worth noting: when the overall environment is still dominated by the word "caution", a group of entrepreneurs with a background at ByteDance have received financing intensively.
According to the monitoring by IT Juzi, in February alone, five ByteDance - affiliated startups completed a new round of financing -
From AI video generation to solid - state batteries, from intelligent agent platforms to science - fiction SLG games, the scope of the tracks is extremely wide, but the resumes of the founders highly overlap:
They have all held important positions at ByteDance. Now, armed with the technological knowledge and business resources accumulated at the big tech company, they are creating a "ByteDance whirlwind" in the startup market.
Five Rounds of Financing, Five Different ByteDance Stories
Arknovv: Wu Dezhou's "Fourth Startup"
On February 27, Arknovv, a manufacturer of AI sports glasses, announced the completion of a Pre - A round of financing exceeding 100 million yuan, jointly invested by Skyworth Capital and Boyu Capital. This is the company's second round of financing in 2026 - it just received a $10 million angel round led by Alibaba in January.
The resume of founder Wu Dezhou is truly "top - notch": General Manager of the Honor product line at Huawei (the creator of Huawei's first mobile phone with tens of millions of shipments), CTO of Smartisan Technology, and President of ByteDance's Xinshi Laboratory. After leaving ByteDance in 2022, he founded Arknovv, which focuses on the AI sports glasses BleeqUp and targets outdoor scenarios such as cycling and skiing.
From the official website of Arknovv
It's worth noting that Wu Dezhou's tenure at ByteDance was relatively short, but this experience has obviously added room for imagination for the implementation of AI technology in his AR project. Completing two consecutive large - scale rounds of financing within half a year, with first - tier institutions such as Alibaba, Skyworth, and Boyu placing bets one after another, shows the capital's recognition of the combination of "hardware veteran + new AI scenarios".
Generative Intelligence Technology: Luo Yihang's "Commercialization Make - up"
On February 5, Generative Intelligence Technology, a company specializing in large - scale video - generation models, completed an A + round of financing exceeding 600 million yuan, setting a new record for a single - round financing in the domestic video - generation field. This is nearly a year since Luo Yihang joined as CEO in March 2025.
Luo Yihang's joining is itself a microcosm of Generative Intelligence Technology's "key leap". Before joining Generative Intelligence Technology, he was in charge of the AI application product line at ByteDance's Volcengine and reported directly to the president of Volcengine. He witnessed the implementation of AI applications in Douyin from scratch. His arrival filled the commercialization gap for this Tsinghua - affiliated technology company.
Generative Intelligence Technology revealed that in 2025, the company's users and revenue grew by more than 10 times. Luo Yihang's ByteDance background not only brought To B and To C commercialization experience but, more importantly, brought back the Internet product methodology of "data - driven + rapid iteration" - which is exactly the most urgently needed ability for current large - model companies to move from "technical demos" to "commercial closed - loops".
Qingcheng Extreme Intelligence: Tang Xiongchao's "Domestic Computing Power Breakthrough"
In February, Qingcheng Extreme Intelligence, an AI Infra company, completed an A ++ round of financing, with the asset management company of Tsinghua University taking a stake. Founder Tang Xiongchao graduated with a doctorate from the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University in 2019. He first joined Sangfor and then joined ByteDance in 2022 as a senior R & D engineer, responsible for the architecture of computationally intensive products.
His experience at ByteDance made Tang Xiongchao deeply understand the computing power bottleneck in large - model training and inference. He founded Qingcheng Extreme Intelligence at the end of 2023, focusing on AI system software. Its independently developed "Chitu" inference engine and "Bagua Furnace" system have achieved nearly twice the training acceleration on domestic chip clusters.
The combination of a Tsinghua technical background and ByteDance engineering experience has enabled Qingcheng Extreme Intelligence to quickly obtain multiple rounds of financing in the general trend of domestic computing power substitution. From the first - round financing of tens of millions of yuan in March 2024 to the current A ++ round, institutions such as Zhipu AI, CICC Capital, and the Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund have continued to increase their investment.
Future - Style Intelligence: Yang Jinsong's "Pragmatic AI Agent School"
In February, AutoAgents.ai (Future - Style Intelligence) completed an A - round financing, jointly invested by Tanyuan Fund and Zhongguancun Collaborative Innovation Fund. Founder Yang Jinsong was previously in charge of the AI & Search products at ByteDance's Feishu. Even earlier, he led the launch of the "Ali Lingjie" and Tongyi - Alicemind platforms at Alibaba's DAMO Academy.
Different from the "technological idealism" of many large - model startups, Yang Jinsong's resume shows that he is a "pragmatic product person" - he was in charge of an aPaaS platform with an annual revenue of $200 million at Amazon AWS and has implemented AI products at Feishu. Future - Style Intelligence is also positioned very pragmatically: it aims to build an enterprise - level AI Agent platform to help enterprises improve work efficiency.
Completing a tens - of - millions - of - yuan angel round in March 2025 and then an A - round in less than a year, this pace is quite fast among current AI application - layer startups.
Fenglane Network: Qin Yuqing's "New Chapter of an SLG Veteran"
In February, game company Fenglane Network completed a Pre - A round of financing of tens of millions of RMB, invested by Bamboo Games. Founder Qin Yuqing's resume in the game industry is like an "SLG textbook": she worked on "League of Lords" at NetEase, "Rise of Kingdoms" at Lilith, "Kingdom of Avalon" at FunPlus, and her last big - tech experience was as the head of Project Group 3 at ByteDance's Zhaoxi Guangnian Gaia Studio.
Qin Yuqing, provided by the interviewee, from @Game Grapes
After leaving ByteDance at the end of 2024, Qin Yuqing quickly founded Fenglane Network in January 2025, focusing on the hardcore science - fiction SLG game "Code: Space". Interestingly, her company received strategic investment from Huayu Network, the developer of "Three Kingdoms: Plan for the World", just three months after its establishment - the latter was the team she supported with all her savings in 2022.
From leaving the company to getting financing, from being a ByteDance employee to an independent entrepreneur, Qin Yuqing's transformation speed confirms the characteristic of "high talent mobility" in the game industry. It also shows that in the SLG category, capital is more willing to bet on "people who have created hit games" rather than "big - tech brands".
Looking at It Calmly: A Big - Tech Background Is a Necessary but Not Sufficient Condition
The concentrated explosion of five rounds of financing does constitute an interesting observation sample. However, this does not mean that the name "ByteDance" itself is a pass for financing.
First, the background needs to be precisely matched with the track. Wu Dezhou is engaged in hardware, Luo Yihang in AI commercialization, and Tang Xiongchao in computing power engineering - their ByteDance experiences are highly in sync with their current startup projects. In contrast, many ByteDance - affiliated entrepreneurs in the market are making cross - border forays into consumer and education sectors, and they face significantly greater financing difficulties. What capital values is not the logo on the resume but the specific cognitive compound interest brought by this experience.
Second, timing may be more important than background. Generative Intelligence Technology's 600 - million - yuan financing occurred on the eve of the explosion of video - generation models; Qingcheng Extreme Intelligence received investment from Tsinghua state - owned assets, hitting the policy window for domestic computing power substitution; Arknovv's consecutive rounds of financing coincided with the critical node when the AI glasses track moved from concept to mass production. Even for equally excellent teams, if they had emerged half a year earlier or later, the results could have been completely different.
Moreover, a big - tech background also has its hidden costs. ByteDance - affiliated entrepreneurs are often accustomed to the resource density and iteration speed of large platforms. When transitioning to startups, they often face the psychological gap of "going from commanding thousands of troops to doing everything themselves". In addition, the salary expectations from big - tech companies may also drive up the early costs of startups - among these five rounds of financing, a high proportion are A - rounds or earlier, which to some extent reflects the capital's early payment for the team's "high costs".
More importantly, there is never only one path to entrepreneurial success.
Meanwhile, in the market, entrepreneurs without a big - tech background are also getting financing:
There are academic teams transforming laboratory results from Tsinghua and MIT; grass - roots entrepreneurs who have emerged from second - tier brands; and returnees, technical experts bringing Silicon Valley experience back to China.
The ByteDance - affiliated path is just one of them and may not be suitable for all tracks - for example, in the hard - tech field that requires strong supply - chain accumulation, those from Huawei or BYD may have more advantages; in the game track that requires strong operations, those from NetEase or Tencent are often more recognized.
For the venture capital market, the real inspiration from these five rounds of financing may be:
When technological changes (such as AI) are superimposed on industrial cycles (such as hardware substitution), people with experience at top - tier platforms are indeed more likely to get the first ticket - but this is only the beginning.
From financing to product implementation, from single - point breakthroughs to scale - up, a ByteDance background can solve the "starting point" problem but not the "ending point" problem.
After all, what capital ultimately cares about is whether the company can run through the commercial closed - loop independently, beyond the founder's resume halo.
This article is from the WeChat official account "IT Juzi" (ID: itjuzi521), author: Judy Judy, published by 36Kr with authorization.