Smile Capital

Founding partners Cui Jing and Liang Wei lead all investment decisions. Both came from technology operating roles before founding the firm in 2014, and the partnership structure remains flat — the firm does not employ a separate investment committee layer. This gives them the ability to move quickly on seed-stage terms when they have technical conviction.

Smile's sourcing is founder-referral-driven and concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta hard-tech ecosystem. Because Cui and Liang come from technical backgrounds — rather than finance — and because the firm stuck with deep-tech through the 2018–2020 downturn, founders in autonomous driving and robotics networks often route opportunities to Smile before broader institutional processes begin.

Smile Capital invests directly in portfolio companies and does not operate as a fund-of-funds. All known commitments are direct equity rounds from seed to growth stage, with Smile typically taking board or board-observer seats in the autonomous-driving and AI infrastructure companies where it leads rounds.

Smile has stated it does not invest in consumer internet, e-commerce, food delivery, or content platforms — verticals that dominated Chinese venture capital in the 2010s. The firm's public portfolio and co-investor patterns show no exposure to real estate, retail, or financial services, reinforcing a concentrated hard-tech mandate.

Smile regularly co-invests alongside global deep-tech funds and Chinese government-guided funds. In the Hesai Technology round, for example, Smile co-invested alongside Bosch and Baidu (per Reuters, 2021). The firm is comfortable in syndicates but tends to lead or anchor early rounds in its core sectors.

Unlike technology-transfer offices or state-affiliated innovation funds, Smile is an independent partnership with no parent institution. Its LPs are not public. The firm competes directly with Sequoia Capital China and Qiming Venture Partners for autonomous-driving and robotics deals — but without the multi-sector fund branding, which appeals to founders who want a pure technical partner rather than a generalist platform.

Smile's hard-tech focus meant its portfolio sat largely outside the consumer-internet and fintech sectors targeted by the 2020–2022 regulatory campaign. The firm continued deploying capital during that period, and its two most visible exits — Hesai and WeRide — both occurred after the regulatory environment stabilized, with Hesai listing in 2023 and WeRide in 2024.