Perovskite startup Yanhe Technology closes three rounds in six months
What's the deal? Yanhe Technology, a Chinese perovskite solar cell startup founded just two years ago, has completed its Series A2 round worth hundreds of millions of yuan. The round was led by existing investor Zhaoxi Capital, with Shunwei Capital and NIO CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → co-leading. Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group, Yutian Guanjia, and Zhongke Tiansuan also participated.
This marks the company's third financing round in six months — and it says two more rounds are nearly closed.
The startup was founded by Feng Fan, born in 1997, who holds a bachelor's degree in materials chemistry from Peking University and a master's from Columbia University. Before launching Yanhe, he worked in investment and commercialisation at CITIC Securities and DeepTech.
Why now? Perovskite solar cells have been a hot investment area in China for years, with nearly 10 billion yuan deployed in the sector between 2021 and 2022. But the field has traditionally been seen as a domain for veterans and large corporates.
Feng Fan's thesis: AI is driving rapid software iteration, but hardware progress lags — and the bottleneck is energy. He points to embodied robots as a case in point. "Imagine if a robot needs to be charged frequently, and the battery needs to be replaced every half an hour," he said. "This is obviously unsustainable." He sees perovskite batteries as a key enabler for the next generation of energy-efficient hardware.
What could go wrong? Perovskite technology has struggled with durability and commercial scalability for years. The field is crowded with well-funded incumbents, and a two-year-old startup led by a 29-year-old founder will face scepticism about its ability to compete against established players in deep-tech manufacturing.
Five rounds of financing in two years also raises questions about capital efficiency and dilution.
The signal: NIO Capital's co-lead in this round is notable — as the investment arm of one of China's largest EV makers, its involvement suggests a strategic bet that perovskite technology could find applications beyond traditional solar panels, potentially in electric vehicles and the broader mobility ecosystem. With nearly 10 billion yuan invested in the perovskite sector between 2021 and 2022, and financing now accelerating again around a two-year-old startup, the deal points to renewed investor confidence that the technology's commercialisation timeline may finally be shortening.
Read more: eu.36kr.com
