PAG backs China AI investment management start-up

The company claims to have supplied investment research, risk management, and asset management services to more than 2,000 financial institutions. It has also provided investment advisory and asset management services to over 10 million individual investors.

DataYes’ selling point is an ability to aggregate the vast, fragmented universe of financial information and extract useful insights that can form the basis of investment decisions. It was the first company of its kind in China to offer a full spectrum of solutions for financial institutions to gather, process, model and refine data to extract knowledge.

Near-term objectives include expanding the customer base beyond financial institutions to include government and business clients that want software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to support industry analysis and enable data-empowered decision making.

Founded in 2013, DataYes is a subsidiary of Wanxiang Holdings, a holding company controlled by Wanxiang Group, best known as one of China’s largest automotive parts suppliers. Wanxiang Holdings is an investment holding company with exposure across a wide range of financial services, including insurance, asset management, and payment services.

Digital assets arm HashKey is arguably the most experienced and active blockchain investor in Asia, with business lines covering custody and brokerage services for digital assets, mostly serving family offices and high net worth individuals (HNWIs). It set up Asia’s first blockchain VC fund in 2015.

DataYes is expected to benefit from transformation in China’s investment management industry, driven by a combination of rising household wealth and technology-enabled product offerings. A statement issued by PAG noted that digitized investment management will become a core competency for leading financial services companies.

Other private equity-backed players targeting the wealth management space range from Snowball Finance, which started out as an online financial information platform, and Lufax, a former peer-to-peer lender established by Ping An Group. Lufax listed in the US last November.

"Over the years, DataYes has had tremendous success in applying cutting-edge technology in big data and AI into investment research and asset management, helping clients make better decisions with more efficient data analytics and tools,” said Kevin Xu, a partner at PAG.

Xu is responsible for PAG’s growth fund, which makes middle-market investments – predominantly in China – that fall below the minimum check size for the firm’s pan-Asian vehicle. The second vehicle raised under the strategy closed earlier this year with $525 million in commitments.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Financials
• Expansion
• China
• Financial Services
• Growth capital
• PAG