The remarks of Chinese President Xi Jinping on blockchain on October 24 this year inspired a huge feel-good factor in domestic industry players.
Yunphant Blockchain (云象) has announced the completion of its Series A++ round of financing (on December 26), securing tens of millions of yuan.
The fresh funding even marks the first unloading of big money into China’s blockchain companies since the ‘October 24 announcement’– during which Chinese President Xi Jinping (习近平主席) called for blockchain to become a focus of national innovation.
Up to now, Yunphant Blockchain has closed five rounds of funding, collecting over CNY 200 million in total.
Shenzhen Capital Group (深创投) – an institute that ranks top in the office of ‘China’s Top 100 Venture Capital’ – is among its existing investors, having previously led the tens of millions Series A that kick-started the blockchain startup.
Founded in 2014, the Hangzhou-based company is a leading domestic blockchain infrastructure service provider, and also one of the first Chinese movers to engage in blockchain technology research and commercialization.
Particularly, the company has strong capabilities in blockchain-related R&D, as well as rich experiences in delivering solutions targeting the financial scene – and banking, especially.
The Chinese blockchain forerunner currently has over 50 blockchain invention patents and nine worldwide patents, covering such elements as consensus plug-ins, information privacy tools, inter-blockchain technology and Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) operations management.
As the first cross-institutional blockchain infrastructure service provider of China’s commercial banking system, according to the company, it has offered corresponding alliance chain technologies to tens of commercial banks and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), including China Bank (中国银行, 601988: SH), China CITIC Bank (中信银行, 601998: SH), Mingshen Bank (中国民生银行, 600016: SH) and Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (港交所, 0388:HKG).
Application scenarios for its services encompass trade finance, supply chain finance, asset securitization, issuance review of financial instruments and bank depository.
In 2018, Yunphant ranked first in the ‘Top 100 List of China Blockchain Enterprises’ jointly released by Tsinghua University Internet Industry Research Institute (清华大学互联网产业研究院) and CCID Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (工信部赛迪区块链研究院).
Moreover, it was shortlisted for the ‘Unicorn & Quasi-Unicorn Enterprises 2019’ issued by Hangzhou Municipal People’s Government.
Following China’s leader designation of blockchain as ‘a key breakthrough that can facilitate China's progress in core technologies,’ the industry has seen a wave of commercial applications.
According to Deng Xu – Co-Founder and Managing Director of Yunphant –in an interview with Sina Finance, its existing business contracted with government and SOEs began to accelerate after the ‘October 24 announcement.’ At the same time, new orders also started to increase sharply.
With the fresh money, the company is going to invest further in core blockchain technologies to strengthen its leading status in the market; it will also seek to expand the application scenarios of its products and services, according to the team.
Yunphant has now basically begun to break even and is expected to see profitability in 2020.