Exclusive: Hipower Completes Over RMB 70 Million Series B+ Round as CRO Industry Consolidation Accelerates

Recently, Guangzhou Hipower Pharmaceutical R&D Co., Ltd. (hereinafter "Hipower") announced the completion of a RMB 70.06 million Series B+ round. The round was led by Grand Flight, an alternative investment platform under Far East Horizon, with Guangzhou Health Industry Investment, Wanlian Guangsheng, Liwan Guangyao Fund, and Jingxi Investment co-investing.

The round will mainly support the iteration of tools for AI-assisted protocol design and enrollment feasibility assessment, strengthen real-time data quality control, risk identification, and end-to-end traceability, and codify research methods and evidence requirements into reusable design and quality-control rules. These investments are aimed at shortening protocol preparation time, lowering the risk of enrollment delays, reducing downstream data rework, and improving schedule control and data reliability in multicenter studies.

Against the backdrop of accelerating industry consolidation and steadily rising regulatory requirements, this round also offers a case study: how can CRO companies that have long specialized in clinical research and kept investing in digital and intelligent systems build their core competitiveness for the next stage?

Consolidation in China's CRO industry kept accelerating in 2026. According to an incomplete tally by VCBeat, eight CRO M&A deals were closed or announced in China in the first four months of this year. Tigermed's 2025 annual report shows that, measured by human genetic resources filing, the number of clinical CRO companies completing filings in 2025 fell 69% from the industry peak in 2021.

Amid this industry shakeout, Hipower completed its RMB 70.06 million Series B+ round even as consolidation accelerated. From an industrial-investor perspective, its core appeal lies in the organic combination of accumulated clinical practice, a multicenter research collaboration network, and self-developed digital products. Such capabilities must be honed over the long term in real projects and cannot be replicated quickly with short-term capital. Leveraging investors' healthcare industry resources and demand for pharmaceutical and device R&D, Hipower is also expected to further broaden the application scenarios for its clinical services and technology products.

Meanwhile, regulatory policy is reshaping the capability standards of the CRO industry. In 2026, China's revised Good Clinical Practice (GCP) for drug trials took effect, and regulators including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Singapore's Health Sciences Authority (HSA) have successively advanced requirements related to ICH E6(R3), further strengthening quality by design, risk management, and governance of data across the full lifecycle.

Quality management and data governance capabilities have become the core threshold for competition in the CRO industry.

A company's future competitive edge increasingly depends on whether it can build a verifiable, traceable, and continuously iterable system that consistently delivers high-quality clinical research services. As AI gradually enters study design, data management, and clinical operations, the integration of professional experience, quality systems, and technical capability will become a key factor in industry differentiation.

Founded in 2009, Hipower has undertaken and completed more than 1,250 clinical research projects, served more than 600 clients at home and abroad, and worked with more than 3,000 clinical sites. Over the past five years, the company has completed five rounds of financing, steadily increasing its investment in digitalization and technological innovation in clinical research.

Since 2021, Hipower has, through its subsidiary Yishutong, gradually built a digital product system including MedioSuite, applying technology to clinical execution steps such as patient recruitment, data capture, and follow-up. According to the company, the platform has supported data entry for more than 1,000 clinical trial projects.

In 2026, Hipower launched two new products, MedioSeek and MedioCompose, extending its technical capabilities to the front end of clinical trials: the former supports site selection and enrollment feasibility assessment through data analysis, while the latter draws on clinical project experience, professional literature, and multi-agent technology to assist with medical protocol design, regulatory validation, and evidence traceability.

Moving up from process digitalization at the operational level to decision-making and professional enablement in the early stages of clinical research, Hipower is turning years of accumulated clinical experience, medical knowledge, and business practice into technology assets that can be reused across projects.

This round will further step up investment in building this technology system, connecting the collaborative links among study design, project execution, and quality management, and exploring a growth model that balances delivery quality, operational efficiency, and business scale.

For a CRO industry caught in the wave of consolidation and technological change, Hipower's financing and product iteration offer a reference point: let real clinical practice drive technology development, use industrial capital to solidify long-term capabilities, and upgrade the company's competitive moat from pure project execution to a sustainable, high-quality clinical delivery system.