Singapore’s Temasek Holdings has led a $40-million funding round in cloud-rendering solutions developer Well-Link Technologies as the Chinese startup is seeking to expand internationally.
As a Series B2 round for Well-Link, the new investment attracted capital injections from existing shareholders, including China-focused technology venture capital (VC) firm Future Capital and CDH Venture and Growth Capital (CDH VGC), the venture arm of the country’s alternative investment major CDH Investments, the startup announced on Monday.
With the completion of this deal, Well-Link has raised a total of five funding rounds since its inception three years ago with previous investors, including Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp and its founder Lei Jun-backed VC company Shunwei Capital, as well as Chinese video game developer miHoYo.
Well-Link is looking to speed up its overseas foray as the firm’s next stage of development by leveraging the investor’s global vision and industry resources. “Temasek values long-term market trends, which coincides with our vision for Well-Link,” said founder and CEO Guo Jianjun in a post on the firm’s official WeChat account.
Beijing-based Well-Link, whose partners include Microsoft China, was founded in early 2019 to provide corporate clients, such as game developers, operators and console manufacturers, with real-time cloud rendering solutions. Cloud rendering is the process of calculating and creating 3D images, animations or movies through multiple servers on the cloud, instead of one single computer, to make the computations significantly faster.
The startup counts Hong Kong-listed CMGE Technology Group, an intellectual property (IP)-based game publisher, cloud computer firm Kingsoft Cloud and e-commerce giant Alibaba Group’s cloud computing business Alibaba Cloud among its partners. It also helped Shanghai-based miHoYo launch the cloud version of its hit free-to-play fantasy game Genshin Impact.
The fresh capital will help the startup further invest in the development of software and hardware based on real-time cloud rendering, as it targets to accelerate the construction of the next-generation computation platform, according to the post.
Well-Link said it is also actively exploring the potential of applying cloud rendering in the development of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) content, as the global market for AR/VR headsets almost doubled in 2021 with shipments reaching 11.2 million units, show data from market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC).