Singapore’s Temasek leads a $40 million funding round in a Chinese startup

BEIJING — 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.

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The $40 million deal announced Monday is an early-stage, or B2 round, led by Temasek and includes existing shareholders Future Capital and VGC.

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 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.

China’s gaming industry has come under increased regulatory scrutiny in the last 18 months, with tighter restrictions on how long minors can play. Regulators have also been slow to approve many new games by industry giants NetEase and Tencent, although the two companies each received approvals for titles this month.