Family-office VCs rise: entrepreneurs no longer hand money to VCs, but enter early-stage equity investing themselves

The article notes that family-office VCs are emerging as a new force in China's primary market, with family offices appearing in the funding announcements of projects such as Qianxun Intelligence, Zenbot, Wujie Zhihang, and Digua Robotics. These institutions use their own capital, their own industry knowledge, and teams they build themselves to invest directly in early-stage equity, moving down from Series B and Series C to angel and Pre-A rounds, unlike traditional family offices that act as LPs, CVCs constrained by their main business, or former entrepreneurs who raise funds to become GPs.