hong-kong
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Tencent WeStart put a production studio inside the startup office
In Hong Kong, Tencent WeStart brought desks, recording rooms and corporate introductions under one roof. Its bet: digital entrepreneurs need somewhere to make the work, and someone who can help it travel.
Brinc wants to get startups past the pitch
The Hong Kong accelerator began with the messy business of making hardware. Its next test is turning corporate introductions into working pilots - with very different prices for admission.
HK01 Wants the Rest of Your Day
The Hong Kong publisher has built shopping, ticketing and rewards around the daily news habit. Its most revealing growth experiment began with runners looking for photographs of themselves.
SHOPLINE sells the shop behind the shop
A storefront gets the applause. SHOPLINE wants the inventory, payments and repeat orders to work together - and its best sales pitch is the work a merchant can stop doing.
The K-Beauty Cart That Became a $347 Million Export Machine
YesStyle turned the messy business of finding, explaining and shipping Asian beauty worldwide into a repeatable retail system. Its sharpest advantage is not a single serum or skirt - it is the loop connecting 400-plus Korean brands, half a million creators and shoppers across more than 200 countries and territories.
Babel Finance
The Hong Kong lender wanted to be the JP Morgan of crypto. It reached a $2 billion valuation in May 2022 - then froze withdrawals a month later after an unhedged trading bet lost roughly $280 million of client money.
1Token
1Token builds institutional back-to-front office software for crypto funds and financial institutions. Founded in 2018 and led by Damon Xu, the company runs a portfolio management system (PMS), risk management system (RMS), trade reconciliation, and T+0 shadow NAV accounting that stitch together fragmented CeFi exchanges, DeFi protocols and TradFi accounts into one book. Today it connects 80+ CeFi venues and thousands of DeFi protocols, serving 100+ institutional clients that monitor more than $20B in assets across APAC, North America and Europe.
WONZ Technology
WONZ Technology is a digital health company built around one goal: helping the world's roughly 1.5 billion smokers cut their exposure to the harmful byproducts of combustion. Founded by Xin (Steven) Du in 2020, WONZ pairs hardware - heat-not-burn smart devices sold under the CIGPAL brand - with digital intervention software, an exhaled-CO tester, and AI-guided coaching. Its proprietary WHC (WONZ Heat Currents) thermal distillation technology is designed to reduce inhalation of more than 90% of the main harmful substances in cigarette smoke while easing cravings and withdrawal. The company holds over 100 patents and has raised more than US$13 million from investors including XVC.
TRLab
TRLab is an art-and-technology company that fuses Web3 tools with fine-art expertise to reinvent how people learn about, experience, and collect art. Co-founded in 2021 by Christie's non-executive Deputy Chairman Xin Li-Cohen and CEO Audrey Ou, the platform builds education-driven, interactive collecting journeys with major artists, estates and institutions - including the Calder Foundation, the Chris Burden Estate, Cai Guo-Qiang, Vogue and digital-art organization Rhizome. It has raised roughly $9.2M total, and more recently has begun extending its creative IP into lifestyle goods and immersive experiences.