Yanyu Technology: Building an AI Content Empire with $300 Million

On June 18, 2026, a bombshell was dropped in China’s AI application sector.

Evoken Announces Completion of Nearly $300 Million Series B+ Funding Roundfinancing...with a post-investment valuation exceeding $2 billion—making it one of the largest single funding rounds to date in China’s AI application sector. Granite Asia, Tencent, and Shunwei Capital jointly led the round, with HT Investment and Times Capital participating as co-investors, while existing shareholders including Gaorong Capital, Ant Group, Sequoia China, and Source Code Capital all increased their investments.

While the large-model sector is still burning through cash and spinning stories, this company has already proven one thing with its $300 million ARR and 30,001 TP4T annual revenue growth:AI applications aren't a mirage—they're money-makers.

From Zero to Unicorn in Three Years: A Precision “Dimension-Lowering” Strike

Yanyu Technology was established on May 16, 2023. The registered entity is Beijing Yanyu Technology Co., Ltd. (formerly known as ”Beijing Qidian Xingyu Technology Co., Ltd.”), with Yang Nan as its legal representative and founder Chen Mian as its actual controller (holding a 73.95% stake). The company is headquartered in Beijing and has a branch in Shanghai. It employs fewer than 50 people, with only 27 employees enrolled in social insurance.

It was this ”small team” that fought the fiercest battle in China’s AI application sector.

In three years, the company has secured nearly six rounds of funding, with its valuation soaring from zero to $2 billion. More importantly, the company has been selected as a 2025 National High-Tech Enterprise and ranked among the Top 100 AI Leaders, and has obtained filing approvals from the Cyberspace Administration of China for its deep synthesis service algorithms and generative AI services.

As of May 2026, Yanyu Technology’s ARR (annual recurring revenue) had exceeded $300 million, nearly tripling since the completion of this funding round. In May 2026, the group’s overall revenue grew by more than3000%...ARR is expected to exceed $600 million by the end of 2026.

Against the backdrop of the AI applications sector, where companies generally ”burn cash to drive growth,” YanYu Technology is one of the very few companies to achieve high revenue, high growth, and healthy cash flow all at once.

Born in the ”90s, ByteDance’s Youngest at 4-1: A ”Product Obsessive’s” All-In Bet

The driving force behind Yanyu Technology is Chen Mian, born in 1992.

A graduate of Southeast University, he spent a decade working at nearly every major Chinese internet company: Product Director at Mobike, Head of the Product and Growth Team at Didi, and Head of Product & Growth at Meituan Youxian. Eventually, at ByteDance, he becameHead of Global Commercialization for Jianying China and CapCut...reached Grade 4-1 at the age of 28—At the time, ByteDance's Youngest-Ever Product Team 4-1.

In early 2023, ChatGPT sparked a wave of interest in large language models, and Chen Mian decisively resigned to start his own business. His assessment was calm and clear:

“In the early stages of the new technological revolution, the fastest changes occur on the tool side. Transformations in content creation—particularly in professional production—happen first. Consumer-facing products have little tolerance for AI-generated illusions, while mass-market entertainment products have a longer adoption cycle.”

This assessment directly determines the strategic direction of YanYu Technology—We won’t make consumer-oriented entertainment toys; we’ll focus on professional manufacturing first..

Investor Zhu Xiaohu (Gunsand River Ventures) first backed YanYu Technology during its angel round, and his investment criterion can be summed up in a single word:Retention. Three years have passed, and this assessment has been repeatedly confirmed.

Huang Mingming, a partner at Ming Shi Ventures, even left behind a memorable anecdote: In May 2024, he met with Chen Mian, and after chatting for less than 20 minutes, he immediately sent a message to the team on WeChat—“Lock Chen Mian in the conference room—he’s not leaving until he signs the Term Sheet today!”

Chen Mian has summarized his own philosophy on entrepreneurship as follows:

“When it comes to app startups, the key is how to leverage the fundamental shifts in AI that are set to happen in the future. You might find that nothing is ready yet, but you need to start thinking about it now—and when the time comes, you have to go all out.”

Three Sharp Tools That Cut Through the Entire AI Creative Content Workflow

While Yanyu Technology’s product portfolio appears to span three areas—communities, video, and design—its underlying logic is based on a single premise:AI-Generated Creative Content.

1. LiblibAI (Liblib) — China’s largest AI creator community

Yanyu Technology's flagship product, and the name most widely recognized by the public.

• Total number of users exceeds 30 million...One in every three designers in China is using
• With over500,000 original AI models, Over 100 million professional images and video clips
• Has been approved by the Cyberspace Administration of China for the filing of deep synthesis service algorithms and generative AI services.
• The registered trademarks cover the LiblibAI, Libu Libu, and PICPIC brand series, among others.

LiblibAI is more than just a tool—it’s a creative ecosystem. Model authors publish and monetize their models on the platform, while creators use these models to produce content. The platform aggregates assets, templates, user preferences, and creative relationships—the more people join, the richer the ecosystem becomes, and the higher the barriers to entry.

When a designer spends months of hard work fine-tuning parameters and embedding them into a LoRA model on LiblibAI, they become firmly locked in. This lock-in effect, resulting from the ”assetization of know-how,” is far more difficult to break than any technical patent.

2. LibTV—The ”Production-Grade” Solution for AI Video Creation

Launched in March 2026, this platform is designed specifically for short-form video production teams, film and television production companies, advertising agencies, and brand clients. The data is mind-blowing:

The key difference with LibTV lies in“System-First” Architecture—Not just a collection of standalone tools, but the first platform to connect human creators withAI AgentThrough equal collaboration, it addresses consistency challenges throughout the entire workflow—from script and storyboards to final film output. It features over 20 exclusive AI capabilities, including multi-camera 9-grid/25-grid layouts, multi-storyboard generation, and cinematic-grade lighting control.

A typical example: *A Hard Start: I Became a Big Shot Thanks to My Storage Space*, which topped Douyin’s daily anime series chart, has garnered 700 million views across all platforms. LibTV was the core production tool used for the entire series—from storyboarding to the final cut—and the core ”creative team” often consisted of just three or four people.

3. StarFlow — AI Design Agent

Launching in July 2025, it will help users complete the entire process—from conceptualization to design delivery—by integrating multimodal models with agent capabilities.

• Total number of users served exceedsten million
• The international version of Lovart was an instant hit upon launch, with Twitter discussions surging and official video views nearing one million.
• ObtainMusk publicly gave it a thumbs-up

The positioning is crystal clear: ”You say one thing, and it delivers a complete creative design.”

Is $2 billion an underestimate, or is this just the beginning?

When viewed within the global landscape of AI application companies, YanYu Technology has joined peers such as Cursor, Suno, and HeyGen in the top tier. However, compared to overseas companies, its valuation remains low:

For a company with tens of millions of users, $300 million in ARR, validated PMF across multiple products, and year-over-year revenue growth of 3000%, is a $2 billion valuation conservative?

The deeper value lies in the fact that YanYu Technology isn’t betting on a single blockbuster product, but rather on becoming the infrastructure for the AI-driven creative content industry. When a company possesses AI capabilities across all three key nodes of content creation—images, videos, and design—creators no longer need to move back and forth between different platforms or switch workflows; the entire ecosystem completes a closed loop from inspiration to delivery within a single system.

Yanyu Technology is one of the few AI application companies in the industry to have achieved the triple validation of ”user growth, revenue growth, and global expansion.” Its products serve users in numerous countries and regions worldwide, catering to individual creators, content agencies, brands, and professional creative teams.

As the *People’s Daily* noted in its article ”AI Micro-Short Dramas Are Crossing the ”Singularity””: “AI has lowered the production barrier, but it has not lowered the content barrier.” When tools are accessible to everyone, the real competition comes down to the stories themselves—and Yanyu Technology is precisely the one selling the shovels.

The rules of this AI application competition have quietly been rewritten. By 2026, investors will no longer chase parameter scale; instead, they will focus on metrics such as user retention, paid conversion, and sustainable revenue. Over the past three years, Yanyu Technology has proven that only AI applications capable of closing the commercial loop deserve a true valuation premium.

This company's story has only just begun.