Yitu Technology Secures RMB 380 Million Series C Funding to Advance AI in Healthcare

VCBeat has learned that AI company Yitu Technology recently completed a C-round financing of RMB 380 million. The round was led by the legendary investment firm Hillhouse Capital Group, with participation from Yunfeng Capital, Sequoia Capital, Gaorong Capital, and ZhenFund.

It is worth noting that these five funds constitute the “Dream Team” of China’s investment community, representing leading institutions across different investment stages—from private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) to angel investing. Zhang Lei, Yu Feng, Shen Nanpeng, Zhang Zhen, and Xu Xiaoping are frequent top-ranking figures on investment leaderboards.

YITU stated that the funds raised in this round will be primarily used for the research and development of core technologies applying artificial intelligence in the healthcare sector, the expansion of clinical applications in the medical industry, and the building of its AI healthcare team.Currently, the medical team has launched China’s first AI-based imaging diagnostic product for real-world clinical application, and it is also the only AI company in China that achieves full coverage of all medical data.

Yu Feng, Founder and Chairman of Yunfeng Capital, stated, “YITU possesses the capability to achieve world-class innovation. We are not only optimistic about YITU’s team leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance existing medical services, but we also look forward to working with YITU to transform ‘Chinese Intelligence’ into global intelligence.”

Zhang Lei, founder of Hillhouse Capital Group, has always adhered to the principle of “seeking determined practitioners with a grand vision,” and YITU is precisely a company that embodies such qualities. Perhaps it was this shared consensus on foresight that brought them together.

At the recently concluded Green Company Annual Conference of Chinese Entrepreneurs, YITU founder Zhu Long stated in his speech: “The application of artificial intelligence in vertical sectors demands a profound understanding of the integration between technology and specific scenarios. There is a critical need for top-tier experts to serve as translators or communicators, a role that is of paramount importance.”

Applying artificial intelligence technology to the world’s most critical healthcare sector requires not only advanced technology but also profound insight into the pain points faced by hospital physicians and innovative problem-solving thinking.

For clinicians, it is extremely difficult to differentiate the lobe, and particularly the segment, of the lung in which a nodule is located. YITU has innovatively established a “Digital Lung” using deep learning technology to help physicians rapidly and accurately localize nodules and assess their doubling time. In addition,The YITU team has also integrated imaging with pathology, pushing toward the diagnostic limits of medical imaging itself. This is a global first in the fields of artificial intelligence and healthcare.

Leveraging its superior technological advantages and robust engineering implementation capabilities, the YITU Medical Imaging Intelligent Assistance Platform has been adopted by multiple top-tier Grade A tertiary hospitals in Shanghai and Zhejiang Province. The application of artificial intelligence in medical imaging has moved beyond the laboratory and is now being comprehensively deployed in clinical practice.

Public reports state that YITU's artificial intelligence technology has been in actual clinical medical application for over half a year, with its real-world clinical sensitivity already exceeding 95%.Nodules smaller than 10 mm and micronodules smaller than 5 mm account for more than 40% of the detected nodules.. This means that the diagnostic capability of artificial intelligence technology for pulmonary nodules has nearly surpassed the diagnostic level of general practitioners.

At hospitals piloting the YITU Imaging Intelligent Auxiliary Diagnosis Platform, physicians have begun incorporating system-generated reports into their diagnostic conclusions.Taking Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital as an example, the adoption rate of system-generated reports by physicians reached 90%.

In addition to successfully establishing a first-mover advantage in medical imaging, YITU has also made in-depth strategic investments in clinical decision support.YITU's AI Clinical Decision Support Platform has been deployed at the Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center. It leverages deep learning technology to process historical medical records, establishing disease diagnosis models, feature augmentation models, and similar case models to provide preliminary diagnoses for patients and physicians.

Long before entering the healthcare industry, YITU had already established itself as an industry leader in multiple sectors. In the field of public security, YITU’s “Dragonfly Eye” large-scale facial recognition platform has served the public security systems of over 100 cities and prefectures across China, making YITU the only company in the country with the capability to perform comparisons against a facial database of billions. In the financial sector, more than 1,500 branches of China Merchants Bank have integrated YITU’s systems, and their collaborative “face-scanning cash withdrawal” service pioneered a new era in China’s banking industry.

To learn more about Yitu Technology, please click on 《Having Assisted Police in Solving Cases, Yitu Technology Now Crosses Over into Medical AI, with Pulmonary Nodule Detection Rate Exceeding 90%》