Century Huateng invested in Cao Xi

Recently, the listed company Century Huatong announced that its subsidiary Shanghai Shengqu Shumeng plans to invest 150 million yuan to jointly establish Tianjin Lisi Xingque Venture Capital Partnership with Tianjin Lisi Mingtang Enterprise Management Consulting Partnership and other parties, with a duration of 5 years.

The general partner (GP) of this newly established partnership, Lisi Mingtang, is ultimately controlled by Cao Xi, Founding Partner of Monolith Capital.

As we recall last November, Monolith Capital completed the final closing of its USD VC Fund II and RMB VC Fund I, bringing its total assets under management to over 10 billion yuan. As a benchmark for the new generation of VCs, Monolith Capital has delivered impressive portfolio highlights: Moonshot AI and DeepSeek.

Following this trajectory, Century Huatong's investment reach is extending further into the thriving tech scene.

Earning 5.6 Billion Yuan Last Year, It Just Backed a Star-Studded VC

The top game company on the A-share market leads the charge with its moves.

Looking specifically at this new fund from Monolith Capital, the fund vehicle Lisi Xingque was established in June this year with a total committed capital of approximately 423 million yuan. It will focus on investing in unlisted companies in the digital technology sector, covering computer and software technology development. Shanghai Shengqu Shumeng, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Century Huatong, acts as a limited partner in Lisi Xingque with a committed investment of 150 million yuan, accounting for about 35.46% of the fund's total committed capital and making it the largest LP.

Looking across the entire LP lineup, it also includes industrial capital and government-guided funds such as Anyang Zhanzheng Industrial Investment Fund, Jiaxing Feitu Hongyuan, Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone Sci-Tech Innovation Industrial Fund, and Intco Recycling. In addition, Investment Observer has noted that seven individual LPs are also involved, including Li Haiping, Chairman of Lianlong, Wei Hongkun, Chairman of Tianchuang Capital, as well as Ma Baozheng, Fu Minying, and other related shareholders of the Beiyang Haitang Fund affiliated with Tianjin University.

The latest development sees Monolith Capital taking a seat at the table for DeepSeek's Series A financing, alongside other participants including Tencent, NetEase, JD.com, IDG Capital, ZhenFund, and Shixiang Technology. Monolith Capital invested approximately 3 billion yuan, standing out as a rare young institutional player in this financing round.

As is widely known, Monolith Capital was founded in 2021 by Cao Xi, former Partner at Sequoia China, and Tim Wang, former Secondary Market Partner at Boyu Capital, emerging almost simultaneously with the AI wave. It is refreshingly innovative: Cao Xi once shared that the firm does not preset investment directions for its team, nor does it even assign formal titles, instead adopting a "whatever makes sense" approach.

AI is the core investment focus of this emerging institution.

"The most critical direction in the next decade, in my view, remains the new generation of artificial intelligence. We prioritize investing in model companies, with 20% of our first fund allocated to Kimi," Cao Xi stated at the 2026 Investment Observer SuperLink Summit. Upstream in the AI computing power sector, Monolith Capital has also invested in GPU chip company Muxi Technology and AI inference chip developer Cuisu Technology, among others.

To some extent, Century Huatong's participation in investing in Monolith Capital signifies that its investment reach will extend further into the artificial intelligence field.

It is worth noting that this period marks the best performance milestone in Century Huatong's history — in 2025 alone, the company generated 5.6 billion yuan in profits. Its recent semi-annual performance forecast shows that it will achieve a net profit of 4.3 billion yuan to 4.77 billion yuan in the first half of the year, representing a year-on-year increase of over 60%.

Veteran Game Giants Step Up Their Investment Game in Full Force

Century Huatong is no stranger to acting as an LP.

Looking back, since 2026, Century Huatong has successively participated in Shanghai Financial Development Investment Fund Phase II (VI) (Limited Partnership), overseas funds Lighthouse Founders' Fund L.P. and Neuron Venture Opportunity Fund II, L.P., in addition to this committed investment in Lisi Xingque through its subsidiaries.

Without exception, all these moves target tech-focused incubation investments, including enterprises related to semiconductor equipment.

Moore Threads is a notable investment. As early as September 2022, Century Huatong explicitly stated that the company and its affiliated industrial fund had made minority investments in Moore Threads. By the time Moore Threads went public in December 2025, Century Huatong held a 7.3121% stake in Guosheng Capital through its wholly-owned subsidiary Shengqu Shumeng, and Guosheng Capital held approximately 4.17% of the shares in Moore Threads.

This investment brought substantial returns. According to Century Huatong's announcement on December 10 last year, based on the closing price of that day, preliminary estimates show that the stake it holds is expected to impact the net profit for the fourth quarter of 2025 by 640 million yuan, accounting for about 53% of the company's audited attributable net profit for 2024.

Taking a longer-term perspective, Century Huatong has also invested in companies such as Wuyuan Corecove, Haiyi AI, Flexiv Robotics, and LandSpace. "These forward-looking deployments may not directly support the core gaming business in the short term, but they more reflect financial returns and ecological reserves," Century Huatong once stated.

However, from a broader industrial perspective, as the traditional game market has entered a stage of stock competition, innovation breakthroughs in underlying technologies such as core computing power, foundational models, and key hardware are the fundamental path for the game industry — where Century Huatong operates — to overcome technical bottlenecks.

Accordingly, we have seen leading game companies such as miHoYo and 37 Interactive Entertainment make strategic moves — 37 Interactive Entertainment has invested in over 30 hard tech enterprises in total, including AI sector players such as Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI, and Baichuan Intelligence, as well as cutting-edge tech tracks like BrainCo, RayNeo, and Origin Quantum; miHoYo, needless to say, invested in MiniMax at the angel round for large AI models, and in Xinghaitu for embodied robots, alongside a series of forward-looking tech companies such as brain-computer interface firm Zero One Think, controllable nuclear fusion player Energy Singularity, commercial space firm Orienspace, and spatial computing chip company Gravity.

They share a tacit understanding, betting on the yet-to-come future.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Decoding LP", authored by Feng Yuchen, and published with authorization from 36Kr.