Jihu completed the A round of financing of hundreds of millions of yuan and continued to explore the practice of "Sino-foreign joint venture 3.0"

On April 11, GitLab ("GitLab") announced that it had completed the signing of a series A financing contract with a financing amount of hundreds of millions of yuan. The round of financing is conducted in two phases, the first phase is led by Temasek, followed by Alpha Prime, JIYuan Capital, Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Industry Fund and Nokia Growth Fund, and the second phase is led by Taikang Life, with Cheers Fund and Lenovo Venture Capital. In addition, this round of financing has received the founding shareholder Sequoia Broadband Cross-border Digital Industry Fund and Gaocheng Capital to continue to increase holdings. Jihu said that this round of financing funds will be used for product research and development team expansion, market development, open source ecological construction and independent intellectual property research and development.

"Sino-foreign joint venture 3.0" helps Jihu to explore the local market

It is understood that Jihu Company was registered in Wuhan, China on March 18, 2021, is a world-renowned open source software development and project management collaboration platform GitLab Company and the exclusive lead investor Sequoia Broadband Cross-border Digital Industry Fund (hereinafter referred to as "Sequoia Broadband"), as well as Gaocheng Capital jointly established a joint venture company, but also the first high-tech enterprise to enter the Chinese market under the "Sino-foreign joint venture 3.0" structure and has the exclusive authorization of foreign leading technologies and brands, with the first round of investment of hundreds of millions of yuan. Based on the principle of Open-core, Polar Fox will provide a localized one-stop open source software development operation and maintenance (DevOps) platform covering the whole life cycle of software innovation and related customized products and solutions for the Chinese market.

Unlike other foreign-funded enterprises, Jihu Company adopted the "Sino-foreign Joint Venture 3.0" model pioneered by Sequoia Broadband at the beginning of its establishment, in which foreign parties provide technology, products and brands, Sequoia Broadband provides funds and rich local resources, and Chinese and foreign shareholders do not participate in the operation, and open equity incentive mechanism and independent decision-making power to local management, stimulating the vitality of local management to develop products and services that are more in line with local characteristics. Since the beginning of the company's incorporation, the "Sino-foreign joint venture 3.0" model has enabled Jihu Company to integrate international leading technology and brand licensing with the competitiveness and flexibility of domestic local enterprises.

Chen Ran, founder and CEO of Jihu, who has served as a senior position in leading international technology giants and unicorn companies such as IBM, HP and Mesosphere, once said: "Jihu adheres to the tenet of 'In China, for China', and hopes to use this platform to provide enterprises and individual users with localized innovative technologies and services that are more in line with domestic security and controllable requirements, and contribute to the diversity and independent innovation and development of the domestic IT ecosystem." ”

In the course of this year's development, Jihu also showed its own vitality, independently developing and launching the "Jihu GitLab Integrated Security DevOps Platform", "Jihu GitLab SaaS (JihuLab.com) and "GitNative DevOps All-in-One Machine", which are closer to the needs of Chinese developers, and actively participated in the construction of China's open source ecosystem, launching a number of open source and innovation support plans and training courses.

GitLab's shareholding will fall below 50%.

It is worth noting that at the beginning of the establishment of Jihu Company, GitLab accounted for 72.25% of the shares, Sequoia Broadband accounted for 18.75% of the shares, and Gaocheng Capital accounted for 9% of the shares, and this announcement shows that after the completion of this round of financing, the shareholding ratio of GitLab Inc. will drop to less than 50%, further implementing the independent operation system led by the Chinese side, and in the process of this A round of financing, a number of well-known investors oversubscribed, reflecting the confidence of all parties in their future development.

This is also consistent with the three goals set at the beginning of the establishment of Jihu Company, from the short-term goal of "introduction, localization, independent operation, independent innovation" to consolidate the results of the short-term goal, to the independent operation system is further dominated by the Chinese side, closer to the medium-term goal of "completely becoming a Chinese local company from the capital level and better serving local users", and looking forward to the future, the long-term goal of Jihu Company is still to go public in the next few years, introduce more domestic capital to participate in open source construction, and expand the open source ecology. Xu Quanli, co-founder of Sequoia Broadband, also said: "As a founding shareholder, we hope that in the next 3-5 years, Jihu Company can continue to grow rapidly into one of the largest open source software companies in China with world influence that can withstand any risks, and successfully go public." It is understood that GitLab, which provides brand authorization for Jihu Company, will be listed on the US stock market in 2021, with a market value of up to 16 billion at one point, while the current total market value is about 7 billion. Although the capital market is connected to a certain degree of twists and turns, but the open source model has formed a perfect ecosystem in foreign countries is an indisputable fact, according to the cloud native computing foundation (CNCF) survey statistics on the current situation of China's cloud native, CNCF more than 20% of open source projects from China, the contribution ranked second in the world. At the same time, the scale of China's open source contributors is growing rapidly, the growth rate is the first in the world, the number ranks second in the world, the acceptance of open source software is high, and it has the opportunity to develop into the world's largest open source software market, and Jihu is determined to be the forerunner of establishing an open source ecosystem in China.

Jiang Jiali, director of Taikang Asset Investment, the representative of the lead investor in this round, also said that Jihu Company is expected to develop into a world-class software company in the wave of China's economic digital transformation. Xu Quanli, co-founder of Sequoia Broadband, is also optimistic about the future: "As the first company incubated from scratch with Sequoia Broadband's original "Sino-foreign joint venture 3.0" model, Jihu has had world-class products and a vast user base from the first day of its birth, coupled with the long-term blessing of first-line funds and highly competitive equity incentive policies, we believe this will attract the top first-class team in China and greatly accelerate the commercialization process of Jihu. ”

Written by: Nandu reporter Ye Lu intern Duan Xinyu