Zhongke Angel Fund

Zhongke Angel Fund operates as the commercial venture arm of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the national research network encompassing over 100 institutes. Its mandate is to translate CAS laboratory innovations — from materials science to synthetic biology — into investable startup companies. The firm's deal teams are embedded within CAS institutes, which creates a sourcing pipeline unavailable to independent venture funds.

The firm focuses on angel and seed rounds, typically writing checks between RMB 5 million and RMB 20 million. Zhongke leads or co-leads first institutional rounds for companies built around CAS intellectual property. It will occasionally follow on through Series A but does not operate as a growth-stage investor.

Zhongke does not invest in consumer internet, e-commerce, or platform-marketplace models. Its pipeline is anchored entirely in deep-tech sectors that require laboratory or engineering Ph.D.-level origination — principally semiconductors, advanced materials, biopharma tooling, quantum hardware, and precision manufacturing equipment. Pure software plays are notably absent from its disclosed portfolio.

Yes. The firm frequently seeds companies that later attract Series A commitments from established domestic and international VCs. Zhongke co-led Pony.ai's angel round alongside Sequoia China, and Sinopharm Capital subsequently entered portfolio company CASI Pharmaceutical (per the firm, 2023). This co-investment pattern is a structural feature of its model: Zhongke provides the lab-sourced deal and the technical diligence, while external GPs supply later-stage capital and commercial networks.

Zhongke does not publicly list a centralized investment committee or named managing partners. Decision-making authority is distributed across investment directors embedded in specific CAS institutes — a structure designed to keep deal evaluation as close as possible to the originating laboratories. Public record does not identify the firm's ultimate investment-committee composition or fund-level general partner.