YZi Labs has made its first move into AI software, leading an $11 million seed round in VideoTutor, an AI-powered education platform founded by 20-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur Kai Zhao.
Key Takeaways:
YZi Labs led an $11 million seed round in VideoTutor, marking its first AI software investment. VideoTutor, founded by 20-year-old Kai Zhao, transforms any question into a personalized, animated lesson. The funding will boost R&D and global expansion, as VideoTutor scales its AI-driven education engine.The round included participation from JinQiu Fund (affiliated with ByteDance), Baidu Ventures, Amino Capital, and BridgeOne Capital.
The investment marks YZi Labs’ first AI bet since broadening its focus earlier this year, the firm announced in a recent post on X.
AI Tutor VideoTutor Turns Questions Into Animated Lessons, Hits 20K Users in 10 Days
VideoTutor positions itself as an “AI Education Agent” that converts any question into a personalized, animated, and voice-guided lesson.
The platform combines a large language model (LLM) with a Manim-based rendering pipeline, enabling precise visualization of complex topics such as equations, diagrams, and scientific concepts.
Within 10 days of its May 2025 launch, the platform reached over 20,000 users and generated more than 20,000 videos, while receiving 1,000 API integration requests from schools and learning platforms.
Dr. Jing Xiong, AI Investment Director at YZi Labs and former Google Gemini engineer, said VideoTutor’s hybrid AI model outperforms diffusion-based video tools by ensuring “semantic precision and visual clarity” at lower costs.
The company’s proprietary Layout Manager and fault-tolerant LLM loop enable faster and more accurate video generation compared to competitors.
VideoTutor aims to make high-quality tutoring accessible to all, addressing the fact that over 85% of US students can’t afford traditional tutoring, which averages $60–$90 per hour.
Its reach currently spans K–12, SAT/ACT prep, STEM, and language learners.
The seed funding will fuel R&D and global expansion, with plans to enhance its AI animation engine, scale infrastructure, and partner with educational institutions across North America and Europe.
“We received over ten term sheets for this round, but chose YZi Labs as our lead investor because we share the same belief: education should be personalized, affordable, and accessible to all” Zhao said.
YZi Labs Leads $50M Bet on Better Payment Network
YZi Labs, the venture arm formerly known as Binance Labs, has led a $50 million seed round for Better Payment Network (BPN), a startup building stablecoin-based payment rails to streamline global settlements.
The funding, one of the largest early-stage rounds in payments this year, comes amid YZi Labs’ growing focus on CeDeFi infrastructure for emerging markets.
BPN’s system, built on BNB Chain, merges DeFi automation with traditional compliance to enable real-time minting and settlement of fiat-backed stablecoins.
The platform aims to slash cross-border transfer times from days to hours while cutting transaction costs from 2% to 0.3%. Its model removes the need for pre-funded liquidity, freeing trapped capital and improving efficiency across markets.
The startup already supports transfers between regions like Brazil, Nigeria, Mexico, and the Eurozone, with plans to launch a DeFi FX market by year-end to support up to 20 regional stablecoins.
YZi Labs called BPN a “game-changer” for payments, saying its onchain liquidity network could outperform both legacy fintechs and fragmented Web3 payment systems.
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