Singapore state investment firm Temasek is leading a $40 million funding round in a Chinese startup despite a dry spell of deals in the country. The startup, Well-Link Technologies, counts Chinese tech company Xiaomi and Chinese gaming star miHoYo as investors, according to business database Tianyancha.
The $40 million deal announced in early-stage, or B2 round, led by Temasek and includes existing shareholders Future Capital and CDH Venture and Growth Capital. Temasek confirmed the deal in an email.
The Singapore firm’s publicly disclosed exposure to China has declined over the last two years, from 29% in 2020 to 22% as of this March. As of last week, Temasek had only participated in eight China financing deals, down from 41 last year, according to Dealogic.
In just three years, Beijing-based Well-Link Technologies has built a business on real-time cloud rendering, including helping miHoYo launch the cloud version of the hit game Genshin Impact. Cloud rendering uses multiple servers on the cloud, rather than a single computer, to make the computations necessary for creating images such as animations and movies.
Cloud gaming requires fast processing speed since it relies on remote servers and an internet connection to offer people a smooth gaming experience with just a small file download. For example, the cloud version of Genshin Impact is just 78.5 megabytes on Apple’s App Store in China, versus the exponentially larger 3.7 gigabytes for the non-cloud version.