Startup funding: Here are 5 Chinese VCs to consider in 2025

China, an economic powerhouse known for its Great Wall and rich cultural heritage, has also built a formidable presence in the Venture Capital (VC) landscape. With its vast consumer market and rapidly evolving technology sector, China’s VC scene is bustling and vibrant.

According to a 2024 Brookings report, the country is the world’s largest investor in Africa, with over $72 billion in investment between 2014 and 2018. And, it is projected to double over the next 10 years.

The past five years have seen a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42%, peaking at a record-breaking $120 billion in 2022. This impressive trend solidifies China’s position as a leading hub for VC investment globally.

The investment has created over 137,000 jobs across 259 projects. For the same period, France followed with a $34 billion investment, the U.S. ($31 billion), the United Arab Emirates ($25 billion) and Great Britain ($18 billion) followed behind.

This article lists 5 Chinese Venture Capitalists that Nigerian Startups should consider pitching to in 2025.

1. Sequoia Capital China (HongShan)

Sequoia Capital China, now known as HSG (HongShan Capital Group), is a fully integrated investment platform with focus on seed, venture, growth, buyout, infrastructure and public equities investment.

It searches for experienced, innovative, and passionate founders and values teams with a track record of working together.

HSG manages over $55 billion in assets and has invested in over 1,500 companies. Over 160 HSG portfolio companies have been listed on public stock exchanges, while over 140 of its private companies have reached unicorn status.

To date, it has invested over $581.1M in 8 African startups in clean tech, consumer internet, crypto, financial services, healthcare, mobile, and robotics sectors.

These include:

• OPay (Nigerian-based fintech): Series A, July 2019 – $50 million. Series C, Aug 2021 – $400 million. 
• Revio (South-African based fintech): Seed, Nov 2022 – $1.1 million
• Telda (Egyptian-based Fintech): $20 million Seed round – October 2022.

Others are Afriex (Nigeria), Wave mobile (Senegal), and Telda (Egypt).

Future Hub is a subsidiary of Chinese mobile phone and device maker Transsion. Its goal is to fund and incubate African-focused startups. While its original plan was to invest $100k in African fintech startups, the firm has since been involved in other verticals with varying ticket sizes, reaching $300k.

It partnered with Kenya’s Wapi Capital, in 2019 to source and fund early-stage African fintech startups for equity-based investments of up to $100,000. 

Nigerian-based startup, Termii was the first startup funded by Future Hub. The firm CaaS startup raised $30,000 in seed funds in November 2019 as part of Future Hub’s $300,000 investment plan into an African early-stage startup.

Some notable startups to have been funded by Future Hub within the past year include a SA-based game development startup, Carry1st.

Others are:

• PalmPay – Financial Services $40,000,000 Nov 13, 2019 Seed – (Transsion, NetEase, MediaTek).
• Carry1st – Media & Entertainment $2,500,000 May 28, 2020 Seed – CRE Venture Capital, Perivoli Innovations, Chandaria Capital, Lateral Capital, Transsion’s Future Hub, Kam Kronenberg III.
• Parti (Kenyan-based startup) – Advisory services, October 2020 – Partnership.

MiraclePlus is one of the largest startup accelerators in China, with its headquarters in Beijing. It spun off as an independent firm after Y Combinator China was closed. It provides start-ups with as much as $300,000.

Each year, the company provides funding support and holds two cohorts of the Accelerator Program for startups worldwide. Startups arrive at MiraclePlus at different stages from ideation to Series B and are required to display technological innovation and entrepreneurship that can change the world.

MiraclePlus Accelerator is held twice a year, and 505 projects have been invested in across 10 sessions.

After admission, these teams will come to Beijing to participate in a three-month startup accelerator camp. There, MiraclePlus partners work intensively with the founders for three months and help each team to reach tip-top conditions so that they can be ready for thousands of investors on Demo Day.

Startups can apply here for the MiraclePlus accelerator program.

Established in 1999, Redpoint is a leading venture capital firm from Silicon Valley. It started as a business in China in 2005.

Redpoint Ventures China stands out in Africa’s VC landscape with a focus on early-stage and Series C investments. Their deep understanding of high-growth markets brings a unique perspective to the African ecosystem.

It makes minority early-stage investments in companies in communications, networking, technology, telecommunications, media, computer hardware, software for entertainment, internet, multimedia, network management, social software, advertising technology, artificial intelligence, big data, cybersecurity, e-commerce, marketing technology, and Software-as-a-Service sectors.

The VC is a significant investor in OPay’s $400 million funding round on August 23, 2021. It also has investments in other Series-C level startups.

MSA Capital is a Chinese-based global venture capital firm that invests in technology-enabled companies at the seed to growth stage across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.

Recall that the Beijing-based Venture Capitalist launched a colossal $1 billion fund dedicated to MENA pre-initial public offering (IPO) startups last year and plans to extend the offer to other parts of Africa.

With the billion-dollar war chest, the firm intends to catalyse the development of pre-IPO startups, providing them with the necessary capital to scale and succeed.

Its activity includes Seed and Series A investments in mostly fintech and logistics, with over 21 investments in the Series A stage, with an average round size of $22.8m. It also has 18 investments in seed-stage startups with an average round size of $7.43m, and 14 investments in the Series B stage startups with an average round size of $111m.

MSA Capital has invested in some Nigerian startups. These include TradeDepot, a B2B e-commerce platform and Autochek, a car credit startup. They also invested in PawaPay, a mobile money platform operating in Nigeria.