A post-2000 girl from Tsinghua University has gone viral.

In early August, in Shenzhen, a post - 2000 Tsinghua University girl took the stage at the X - Day Xili Lake Roadshow.

She is from ZeroPower Robotics, a company incubated by three post - 2000 Tsinghua students, Min Yuheng, Cheng Yi, and Li Yizhe, along with a group of fellow students at the Tsinghua AI&Robot Intelligent Robotics Laboratory.

"At the beginning, it was just a group of fellow students wanting to do something."

On that day, Li Yizhe recalled the starting point of the venture. Since its establishment in January 2025, in just half a year, ZeroPower Robotics has successively completed angel rounds, angel + rounds, and angel ++ rounds of financing, totaling over 100 million yuan, unexpectedly becoming a phenomenal project in the venture capital circle this year.

Looking from here, a new force is emerging in the latest map of China's venture capital: the post - 2000 Tsinghua group.

The Tsinghua post - 2000s went viral at the Shenzhen roadshow and completed three rounds of financing in half a year

"We are an entrepreneurial team composed of post - 2000 Tsinghua students. Our technology comes from the 12 - year accumulation of the Tsinghua AI&Robot Intelligent Robotics Laboratory." Li Yizhe talked about the entrepreneurial experience at the X - Day Xili Lake Roadshow event in Nanshan District, Shenzhen. She was the youngest among the presenters that day.

(Li Yizhe)

The investment community learned that Min Yuheng, the founder and CEO of ZeroPower Robotics, was born in 2000. He studied at the Mingyue Lake Science and Innovation Experimental Class of Chongqing University (founded by Professor Li Zexiang) for his undergraduate degree and then pursued a postgraduate degree in artificial intelligence at Tsinghua University. He has multiple experiences in hard - tech entrepreneurship.

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Most of the core members of the team are "post - 2000s" and mostly come from the Tsinghua AI&Robot Intelligent Robotics Laboratory -

Cheng Yi, the co - founder and CTO, has published many top - tier papers in the field of robotics and is responsible for transforming the theories in the papers into mass - producible robot products; Liao Tao, the co - founder, has multiple patents and awards and specializes in hardware; another co - founder, Li Yizhe, has a technical blog with over 500,000 views and is responsible for making obscure technologies vivid and understandable.

In January 2025, ZeroPower Robotics was established. "In mathematics, the '0th power' of 0 has never been defined." Min Yuheng explained that this is the origin of ZeroPower Robotics, which contains the mystery of thinking and imagination. The team hopes to make the most fundamental innovation, embrace infinite possibilities, and achieve something from scratch.

Although seemingly young, the ZeroPower team should not be underestimated. The official website shows that the R & D department of the company consists of a post - 2000 algorithm team with Tsinghua and USTC doctors as the core, and over 80% of them come from the top two universities in China; the industrial department is composed of a group of senior experts with decades of experience, coming from Baidu, ByteDance, iFlytek, Midea, etc.

One month after its establishment, the team announced the completion of tens of millions of yuan in angel - round financing and won orders worth tens of millions of yuan, entering the mass - production stage. Three months later, it launched a wheeled humanoid robot, Zerith - H1, targeting vertical scenarios similar to home services (such as hotels and restaurants), with the meaning of "Home 1". Later, the bipedal humanoid robot Zerith - Z1 and others were also launched one after another.

At the end of July this year, ZeroPower announced the completion of hundreds of millions of yuan in angel + and angel ++ rounds of financing. Among them, the angel + round of financing was invested by Baohe Venture Capital, Tongchuang Weiye, and Lihe Technology Innovation, and the angel ++ round was invested by Shuimu Fund, Baohe Venture Capital, Mizuho Lihe, and Ralph Venture Capital.

Currently, the primary market is in a cold state. However, in less than half a year, this young team has completed three rounds of financing exceeding 100 million yuan, leaving a deep impression on the venture capital circle.

This time, Li Yizhe, as the co - founder, led the team to Shenzhen to participate in the special session for Tsinghua alumni projects at the X - Day Xili Lake Roadshow. As a science and innovation roadshow brand created by Nanshan District for national innovation and entrepreneurship projects, since its launch in March 2025, X - Day has regularly held themed roadshows on the first Thursday of each month.

In addition, X - Day has jointly launched the "X - Day & Nanguo Tsinghua Public Welfare Roadshow Platform" with the Shenzhen Tsinghua Alumni Association, specifically targeting Tsinghua alumni's entrepreneurial projects. It also operates regularly at a fixed time and place, held at the new building of the Shenzhen Research Institute of Tsinghua University on the second Thursday afternoon of each month.

This is a microcosm of Shenzhen's initiative to help entrepreneurs "find money".

The new generation of Tsinghua group

The Tsinghua group has always been the main force in China's venture capital circle. Ai Min, the founding partner of Dami Venture Capital, recalled to the investment community that the first project after the establishment of Dami Venture Capital was to invest in Hesai Technology founded by a Tsinghua - affiliated founder. Now, this company has successfully listed in the United States and has entered the leading camp in the field of autonomous driving. He summarized, "Among engineering colleges in China, Tsinghua entrepreneurs are highly representative."

Now, the post - 2000 Tsinghua group is beginning to stand out.

Not long ago, the post - 2000 "genius boy" Chen Chunyu dropped out of school to start a business. In 2024, when the team only had five people and had little income and few users, he received nearly $3 million in financing from investors including Miracle Plus, WeWork Capital, and a VC in Silicon Valley.

There was an episode in this: To support Chen Chunyu's entrepreneurship, a teacher from the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University helped him make connections and got him a free quota from a senior's company. And this senior is Yang Zhilin, the founder of Darkside of the Moon.

Yang Zhilin, from Chaoshan, Guangdong, was admitted to Tsinghua University without examination for winning the top prize in the Olympic competition. He transferred to the Department of Computer Science in his sophomore year. After graduating from the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University with the first - place grade in 2015, Yang Zhilin went to the United States to pursue a doctoral degree and began to gain some fame in the AI circle. Until the end of 2022, when ChatGPT set off a global storm, he decided to return to China to start a business, and Darkside of the Moon was soon born.

"Four out of the six leading Chinese large - model companies are from the Tsinghua group." Ding Baoyu, the chief investment officer of Tongchuang Weiye, said slowly. Zhang Peng of Zhipu AI, Yan Junjie of MiniMax, Yang Zhilin of Darkside of the Moon, etc., all have a deep connection with Tsinghua. Now, it is popular in the AI circle to compete for Chinese talents, and most of them are Tsinghua alumni.

Looking at the current AI era, whether in the field of large - scale models or embodied intelligence, the figures of Tsinghua students are still everywhere.

For example, Xingdong Jiyuan, a dexterous hand company, originated from Assistant Professor Chen Jianyu of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences at Tsinghua University; Jiang Zheyuan of Songyan Power grew up in the Tsinghua campus from kindergarten to university and gave up his doctoral degree to start a business at the age of 25; there is also Yifei Technology, which is trying to list on the Hong Kong stock market. Its founder is also Zhang Sai, a Tsinghua doctor... The list goes on and on.

Ding Baoyu sighed that the alumni circle has always been an important channel for VC/PE institutions to obtain projects, and the Tsinghua alumni circle is particularly prominent. He described the portrait of Tsinghua entrepreneurs to the investment community -

"First, they have good technology, which is a prominent feature of most Tsinghua entrepreneurs. They have a persistent pursuit of technology; second, they have lofty goals. Most Tsinghua students have a sense of mission in the era, which often makes them more determined when facing great challenges."

Investors are all looking for post - 2000s

Unconsciously, the venture capital circle has entered the era of the post - 2000s.

Just like at the X - Day Xili Lake Roadshow event, when Li Yizhe, a post - 2000, introduced the team members in her PPT, the investors below couldn't help but sigh:

"The post - 2000s have taken the stage."

Recalling in 2014, IDG Capital launched an investment plan targeting the post - 90s and discovered many potential post - 90s entrepreneurs at that time. Now, 10 years have passed, and the wave of the era has come. The post - 2000s are beginning to step onto the historical stage, and investors' attention has begun to focus on them. "The post - 90s back then are the post - 2000s now."

Not long ago, Lingchu Intelligence completed angel - round financing, led by Hillhouse Capital and BlueRun Ventures. Chen Yuanpei, the co - founder of the company, is a post - 2000 who is obsessed with robots and has studied as a visiting scholar at Stanford University under the guidance of Professor Karen Liu and Fei - Fei Li. In addition, Yang Fengyu, the founder and CEO of the embodied intelligence company UniX AI, was born in 2000 and has also attracted the attention of many VCs.

The investment community has observed that many domestic start - up companies are now emerging with "all - around warrior teams" - the team members span each age group from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, to the 2000s. Among them, those born in the 1970s and 1980s represent profound industry experience, while those born in the 1990s and 2000s represent emerging technologies and more forward - looking perspectives.

Looking at start - up companies at home and abroad, the "post - 2000s ratio" is constantly increasing. Recently, what impressed us deeply is that Hong Letong, a post - 2000 girl, founded the AI start - up company Axiom; the 22 - year - old post - 2000 Chinese - American girl Jessica Wu joined hands to start a business and received $21 million in investment jointly from a16z and Conviction.

In the wave of AI, the post - 2000s have become a distinct color. In a previous exchange, a well - known VC investor told the investment community that from an external perspective, the greatest advantage of post - 2000 entrepreneurs comes from "security" -

The earliest group of post - 2000 entrepreneurs in China grew up during the economic upswing period and entered a relatively mature entrepreneurial market after adulthood. Therefore, this group of people has more security and doesn't have to worry about funds and resources. It is this sense of security that allows them to dare to take risks and do what they are really interested in.

In this regard, VC institutions have specifically summarized the post - 2000s: "They are a group of very distinct entrepreneurs, and most of them have a similar 'leap of faith'."

The investment community learned that before the rise of the AI wave, some VC institutions had begun to form teams to specifically discover post - 2000 founders. Sequoia China, GGV Capital, and Source Code Capital have all invested in post - 2000s in the early days, and ZhenFund has recently launched a "Post - 2000 Plan".

Now, more and more VCs are specifically looking for post - 2000 founders. A leading early - stage fund in China has conducted statistics. In 2024, the average age of the founders of the invested projects was the youngest in history, and many post - 2000s have become the mainstays.

As the saying goes: One generation will eventually grow old, but there are always young people.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Investment Community", author: Yang Wenjing, published by 36Kr with authorization.