Originating from a top-tier high school network and expanding into a global tech ecosystem, SevenX is the day-zero fund for AI-native and hard-tech builders.
Within 2 degrees: a friend of a friend, never a cold list.
Founders now start younger, and AI compresses the idea-to-traction timeline. By the time a priced round comes together, years of momentum are already baked in. We get involved earlier—before incorporation, sometimes before the idea—writing the first check like family and staying as an external co-founder through the next round.
We meet founders at pre-incorporation — before the deck, before the round, before the market knows the name.
Every deal reaches us within 2 degrees. Classmates, teachers, and childhood friends give us a fuller read on the people behind the resume.
AI itself, AI across verticals and hardware, AI for science — plus frontier bets like quantum and BCI.
Company-building partner and external co-founder — supporting core-team assembly, early GTM, and the follow-on round.
Chengdu No. 7 is our anchor, not our boundary. Over time, we're extending into the second-degree network around our alumni: university classmates, research labs, Big Tech teammates and former colleagues they trust.
BackgroundChengdu No. 7 High School, Class of 2009 · Peking University, Finance & Mathematics · UCLA exchange
CareerNetEase, then Yunqi Partners, where she became the firm's youngest Managing Director.
Track recordEarly investor in multiple unicorns and companies that have since gone public.
Coverage of Yao Feng and SevenX. Titles translated from the original Chinese where noted.
Behind the founding partner, a lean in-house team runs the day-to-day, with backgrounds spanning Fortune 500 corporate VC, AI unicorns and Big Four accounting.
Founders, scientists, engineers and Big Tech executives from every major tech wave — delivering full-stack support across industry, academia, capital, and critical scaling infrastructure.
Names shown are institutions where members of our alumni network work or have studied. They are listed for illustration only and do not indicate an official partnership with, or endorsement of, SevenX.
Today, every founder in our portfolio is an alumnus. But Chengdu No. 7 is our anchor, not our boundary. Over time, we're extending into their second-degree network: university classmates, research labs, Big Tech teammates, prior colleagues.
What matters to us is the quality of the relationship signal, not the school on the resume. 7Matrix is the sourcing engine; over time, the founders it surfaces will come from well beyond the school.
Because genius talent is being spotted earlier and earlier — from high school through college, well before any round. Unicorn founders keep getting younger; deal windows keep shrinking; pivot cycles that used to take years now take months.
Chengdu No. 7 alumni have played a role in every major technology wave for three decades — across science, AI, hardware, consumer, and biotech. That gives us an unusually rich, cross-generational network to work upstream from.
Deeper roots. Longer relationships. Earlier access. Word of mouth starts before the business plan does.
AI & Frontier Tech. We're stage-first and sector-agnostic within the AI era. Concretely, that spans:
— AI itself & AI Infrastructure: recursive self-improvement, inference optimization, agent infra, data governance, safety.
— AI for Science: commercial space, materials discovery, life sciences.
— Physical AI & Robotics: embodied intelligence, AI hardware, components.
— Industrial & Vertical AI: finance, construction, healthcare, manufacturing, education.
— Agent-native software: video, recruiting, analytics, operations, entertainment.
— Frontier tech beyond AI: quantum, brain-computer interfaces.
We back game changers and bottleneck solvers. The sector list is descriptive, not prescriptive — we stay adaptive and follow what endures.
Three things we do for every portfolio company:
— Core team assembly. When a portfolio company needs a head of algorithm, a supply-chain lead, or an early hire from a specific research group, we route the request through 7Matrix rather than through a recruiter.
— Early customers & industry access. Alumni-led enterprises and Big Tech nodes give portfolio companies a shorter path to PMF conversations and pilot deployments.
— Follow-on funding support. We introduce next-round investors from within the network we already trust.
Hands-on when it matters, never scripted. Connections happen naturally through events and gatherings, not forced introductions.
Built at the center of the Chengdu No. 7 ecosystem, 7Matrix connects AI pioneers, cross-disciplinary engineers and institutional resources — from rising campus innovators to seasoned tech executives, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders.
Beyond fueling SevenX with early deal discovery, it works as a self-sustaining ecosystem that maps people, emerging trends, and timing long before the market notices.
Explore 7Matrix
Wherever a founder lands, our network is already mapped — connecting them with operators, professors, early GTM partners, and next-round leads on day one.
Chengdu No. 7 High School has produced a steady stream of entrepreneurial and scientific talent for over a century: curiosity as joy, exploration without boundaries. Its alumni have played a role in every major technology wave, from telecom and mobile internet to AI, embodied intelligence, and life sciences.
It is our anchor, not our perimeter. The graph reaches outward through every trusted referral within 2 degrees. It's not the destination; it's the door.
Real conversations happen off the record: over hot pot, at meetups, on campus walks, long before a deal is a deal.
7ET (Chengdu No.7 High School Entrepreneurs and Technologists Alliance), the school's official alumni organization launched at its 120th anniversary in April 2025.
Every company below builds in AI or frontier tech, founded by teams with the depth to match — and we backed each one at seed or earlier, through the 7Matrix graph. All are real; names are shared on request.
Selected companies from Fund I, not the full portfolio.
Short essays and field notes on the founders, technologies, and network dynamics we spend our time inside.
We hear from founders pre-idea to seed, and from anyone who wants to build 7Matrix with us in any form — collaborators, advisors, LPs, operators, ecosystem partners, campus and industry nodes. Please be specific about what you're looking for and what you bring — capabilities, resources, network. A clear ask and a clear offer get us to a meaningful conversation fastest.