Starlink Capital closes first USD fund, building dual-currency AI bet
What's the deal? Beijing-based Starlink Capital completed the first close of its first US dollar-denominated fund in October 2026, according to a company-sourced feature published on 36Kr. The vehicle sits alongside the firm's RMB funds, creating a dual-currency structure. Starlink did not disclose the fund's size or commitment figures.
Why now? The firm had already closed the final round of its third venture capital fund and the first phase of its growth fund in the first half of 2026, describing the RMB fund as oversubscribed. The USD close lets Starlink pursue a strategy it frames as "covering all stages and connecting domestic and overseas markets."
What's the endgame? Founded in 2021 and rooted in Zhongguancun near Tsinghua and Peking Universities, Starlink invests only in AI companies upstream and downstream. Founder Mingchen Zhang positions it as a "Researcher Fund," saying "we only invest in the top 1% of top-tier researchers."
The firm reports a cumulative investment scale of tens of billions of yuan across more than 100 portfolio companies. It screens 2,500 to 3,000 projects a year and backs roughly 1%, investing in 40 to 50 companies in the first half of 2026. More than 70% of its portfolio is Tsinghua-related, and it co-built an AI incubator with the university.
Starlink was an early angel lead in Zhipu AI, which the article describes as the first global large-model listed company. It evaluates researchers on three criteria: research ability, research taste, and research leadership. Zhang says "VC is essentially a business of realizing the value of cognition."
What could go wrong? The report is a promotional, company-sourced feature, and claims such as researcher-led funds earning excess returns are not independently verified. Without disclosed fund sizes or final-close targets, "oversubscribed" and "first close" are not comparable measures of scale.
RMB capital dominates deployment, while USD funding remains a smaller share. Starlink's dual-currency move signals appetite for specialist AI managers and an effort to reconnect with overseas capital — not, by itself, evidence of a broad dollar-fundraising revival.
Read more: alpha-maven.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
