$500 million! Former Chinese richest man joins forces with Shanxi's richest woman to tackle two major pain points in biomanufacturing
Recently, Jinbo Biopharma, known as the "first stock of recombinant collagen," announced plans to issue up to 7.1756 million shares to养生堂Limited Company ("Taishan"), representing 6.24% of the company's total share capital prior to the issuance. The offering price is set at 278.72 yuan per share, with total proceeds not exceeding 2 billion yuan.
At the same time, Yang Xia, the actual controller of Jinbo Biopharma, signed a share transfer agreement with Jiushi Management Consulting (Hangzhou) Partnership (Limited Partnership) (hereinafter referred to as "Hangzhou Jiushi"), transferring 5% of the company's shares to Hangzhou Jiushi at a price of 243.84 yuan per share, with a total transaction value reaching 1.403 billion yuan.
The announcement shows that 57.5% of the raised funds will be used for the humanized collagen FAST database and product development platform project. According to vcbeat, this project targets pain points such as intelligent biosynthesis and large-scale production.
The remaining 42.5% will be used to supplement working capital. It is estimated that Jinbo Biopharma's working capital needs from 2025 to 2027 will exceed 850 million yuan.
Additionally, vcbeat learned from Jinbo that this investment and collaboration will also promote the diversified development of collagen materials.
In addition to the substantial fundraising amount, the powerful alliance between the two "wealthiest individuals" has made this investment even more noteworthy.
It is understood that the actual controller of both Ganten and Hangzhou Jiuxi is Zhong Shanshan. After the completion of this transaction, Zhong Shanshan will hold over 10% of the shares of Jinbo Bioscience through two companies under his control, becoming the second-largest shareholder of Jinbo Bioscience.
According to Forbes and New Fortune magazine, in 2024 Zhong Shanshan ranked first among mainland China's richest with $50.8 billion, while in 2025, 42-year-old Zhang Yiming surpassed Zhong Shanshan to become China's richest for the first time, with a fortune of 481.57 billion yuan.
According to the 2025 Hurun Global Rich List, Yang Xia, chairman of Jinbo Biopharma, ranked 2,295th with a fortune of 11.5 billion yuan, becoming the wealthiest woman in Shanxi.
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AI + biosynthesis, targeting two major pain points
According to the announcement, 57.5% of the raised funds will be used for the humanized collagen FAST database and product development platform project, while the remaining 42.5% will be used to supplement working capital.
Jinbo's investment in the humanized collagen FAST database reflects, to some extent, the current focus of the bio-manufacturing industry.
On one hand, it is AI-driven biomanufacturing, or the automation and intelligence of biosynthesis.
According to the announcement, Jinbo Biopharma will focus its raised funds on the FAST database, introducing AI technology for large-scale development.
This database is based on Jinbo's developed "AI Collagen Intelligence System," integrating human-like collagen's "sequence structure - function - application" into a unified database. By combining advanced artificial intelligence technology with high-throughput experimental platforms, it provides a comprehensive, accurate, and efficient solution for the development of human-like collagen.
This database can accelerate the development of novel formulations of recombinant humanized collagen and explore new technologies such as artificial intelligence-based calculation of humanized collagen injection dosage and prediction of gene sequence structures.
In addition to Jinbo Bio, Meja Technologies, an autonomous agent company planning to list in Hong Kong recently, also focuses on AI + biomanufacturing.
Megabio Technology, leveraging autonomous intelligent volumetric layout synthesis in the field of synthetic biology automation, focuses on core technologies such as automation, high throughput, rapid turnaround, and intelligent data management, integrating them with practical applications in synthetic biology including strain screening, yeast directed evolution, and vector construction.
This is directly related to the current pain points faced by the biomanufacturing industry.
According to Jinbo Biopharma's announcement, traditional biomanufacturing research and development methods suffer from long development cycles, high costs, and low efficiency. Meanwhile, biomanufacturing processes involve large amounts of complex data, which are difficult to effectively integrate and utilize using traditional methods, limiting the precision and innovation of R&D.
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, research on collagen's amino acid sequences, structure, function, industry, and applications has been significantly advanced, accelerating protein structure prediction, functional optimization, and new drug development, improving research efficiency and accuracy, and promoting the transformation of biosynthesis from traditional experimental methods toward intelligent and automated approaches.
On the other hand, attention is focused on large-scale production in bio-manufacturing.
According to the announcement, Jinbo Biotech's FAST database covers two major technological platforms—mammalian cell and microbial systems—meeting the entire industrial chain needs for plasmid and recombinant protein development from research to pilot-scale production, ensuring rapid transformation of research outcomes into products suitable for large-scale manufacturing.
By establishing the FAST database of this project, the entire chain from sequence design to production processes is integrated, with AI-designed parameters directly connected to the industrial production system, ensuring rapid transformation of research outcomes.
vcbeat learned from Jinbo that the FAST database is mainly designed to aggregate data related to collagen, and plays a role in promoting production.
Jinbo further pointed out in the announcement that introducing Yangshengtang as a strategic investor can empower the company in areas such as industrialized production, and enable cooperation in commercialization of existing products and large-scale industrial production of humanized collagen, thereby helping the listed company overcome bottlenecks in capacity building, product commercialization, market channel development, and management.
Scaling up production has always been a pain point in the biomanufacturing industry, especially in the critical pilot-scale phase.
It is understood that although theoretically more than 60% of globally important raw materials can be obtained through synthetic biology methods, less than 6% have actually been achieved. This is because, even if a project performs well in the lab-scale phase, many still fail to achieve industrial-scale production and collapse before mass production.
According to a survey by the China High-Tech Industryization Research Society, the success rate of industrialization of scientific and technological achievements can reach 80% after pilot testing, while without pilot testing, the industrialization success rate is only 20-30%.
According to Jinbo, VCBeat learned that the company has not yet disclosed detailed plans regarding its production capacity expansion. Pilot and intermediate-scale testing are also being advanced, as these processes are involved prior to mass production. As for whether there will be a focused investment in an intermediate-scale testing platform, no detailed plans have been released.
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The desire for diversification
In addition to the investment in the FAST database, according to the official WeChat account, after introducing Hesteel as a strategic investor, Jinbo Biopharma will also collaborate with Hesteel in multiple areas, including:
1. Market and Channel Empowerment: Ganten's well-established retail, supermarket, pharmacy, and online channel network will help Jinbo's products penetrate mass consumer scenarios, enabling a transition from professional medical use to everyday health consumption.
2. Accelerated industrialization: Ganten's leading large-scale industrial production system and supply chain management capabilities will significantly enhance the commercialization efficiency of Jinbo's biotechnological achievements, shortening the product time-to-market.
3. Technology R&D integration: Wantai Biological is the first company in China to develop an HPV vaccine, having established a research and development system in vaccines, diagnostic reagents, and biopharmaceuticals. This collaboration will facilitate the research and application of the company's recombinant humanized collagen in the field of serious medicine.
4. Enhanced commercialization capability: Ganluo's experience in consumer brand management and commercialization of medical products will support Jinbo Biopharma in overcoming market expansion bottlenecks.
"From professional healthcare to daily health consumption," and "promoting the research and application of the company's recombinant humanized collagen in the field of serious medicine"—these statements seem to reflect Jinbo Biopharma's "desire" for a diversified portfolio.
"Living Well invested in Jinbo Biotech, which will provide support in sales channels and industry development," Jinbo Biotech said. Given Living Well's extensive presence in the large health industry, its industrial advantages can be leveraged to promote the diversified application of collagen, a biomaterial, across various sectors. Jinbo Biotech is also part of the large health industry. Although薇旖美is currently mainly used in the medical aesthetics sector, collagen actually has potential applications in many other fields.
Jinbo Bio also stated in its announcement that, in the current environment of increasingly intense competition in the biopharmaceutical market, further expanding the application areas of the company's product portfolio is one of the important measures consistent with the company's sustainable development and strategic planning.
Behind Jinbo Bio's desire for diversified expansion, on one hand, the current product structure may carry the risk of being "too concentrated," with heavy reliance on Weiyimei.
From the performance of Jinbo Biopharma, according to the announcement, the company's operating revenues for 2022, 2023, and 2024 were 390.1984 million yuan, 780.2602 million yuan, and 1,442.8314 million yuan respectively, representing a compound annual growth rate of 92.29%. The net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 299.7963 million yuan, 732.3016 million yuan, and 168.5304 million yuan respectively.
Based on 2024 performance, its single-material medical device revenue reached 1.13 billion yuan, up 99.69%, accounting for 78.5% of total revenue. The growth in single-material medical devices was primarily driven by the rapid increase in sales of recombinant type III humanized collagen freeze-dried fibers. According to its official WeChat account, this product is precisely Vycellin.
On the other hand, the inherent characteristics of collagen as a material determine its applicability across multiple fields.
It is reported that Jinbo is conducting basic and applied research as well as industrialization of various types of human collagen, including recombinant humanized collagen, and various antiviral functional proteins, and has continuously carried out application studies in gynecology, dermatology, ophthalmology, surgery, orthopedics, urology, stomatology, and cardiology.