Foreign media reports that Zhao Changpeng ( CZ ), the founder of Binance, recently stated that investments made by YZi Labs during the sluggish period of the crypto market in the past few months may become some of the more successful projects in the institution's portfolio in the future. YZi Labs was formerly known as Binance Labs and now manages assets worth over $10 billion, with its investment scope covering Web3, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology.
This characterization currently remains at the level of opinion. Neither CZ nor YZi Labs has disclosed the entry valuation, holding cost, current book value, or realized returns of these projects, so it is still not possible for the outside world to verify whether these investments have achieved leading performance.
Investment direction extends to AI and robots.
Public information shows that in 2026, YZi Labs disclosed investments in a robotics company RoboForce, a digital asset custody institution BitGo, a predictive market platform Predict.fun, the AI payment protocol, as well as a fixed-rate lending protocol TermMax.
YZi Labs currently emphasizes independent operation, and its funds are not related to CZ or He Yi, the co-founder of Binance. As previously mentioned, Web3 assets still account for the majority of its portfolio, but the institution has also been increasing its investment in AI, robotics, and institutional financial infrastructure in recent years.
In May of this year, he stated that compared to competing directly with large model companies, YZi Labs prefers to invest in infrastructure projects that provide underlying support for AI. Subsequent investments in robotics and payments have largely continued this approach.
Disclosed projects cover hosting and payment.
Among the projects with disclosed amounts, RoboForce has the largest financing scale, totaling 52 million US dollars. The company develops AI robots for industrial applications, targeting industries such as solar energy, data centers, manufacturing, mining, and logistics. It is important to note that the 52 million US dollars refer to the total financing scale for this round, not the individual contribution amount of YZi Labs.
AEON completed a $8 million seed round of financing in May, led by YZi Labs. The project aims to build a payment infrastructure that will enable AI agents to initiate and complete both on-chain and real-world payment settlements. TermMax also received strategic investment from YZi Labs in August, although the specific amount was not disclosed.
Another notable investment comes from Predict.fun. In April of this year, YZi Labs announced an additional investment alongside Susquehanna Crypto. This platform operates on BNB Chain and focuses on a self-hosted forecasting market, with trading topics covering politics, sports, crypto asset prices, and economic events. The platform claims that the cumulative trading volume has exceeded 1.8 billion US dollars.
Whether it can outperform remains to be verified in the future.
The article points out that investing during a downturn usually means entering at a lower price, which indeed may leave room for long-term returns, but it does not mean that all investments made near the bottom of the market will be successful. Especially for projects in the primary market, their performance cannot be measured solely by the rebound in the price of Bitcoin or other tokens.
The return mechanisms for different projects also vary. RoboForce depend on whether industrial clients can convert intended orders into actual deployments; BitGo is aimed at compliance hosting and institutional financial infrastructure; Predict.fun relies on platform liquidity and transaction activity; AEON and TermMax respectively bet on payment and lending scenarios.
In the absence of initial valuation upon entry, subsequent financing prices, exit progress, or actual distribution data, the judgment by CZ that "investments during tough times may outperform" cannot yet be verified by the market. The more observable signals to come will still be the subsequent financing, business implementation, and revenue disclosure of these projects.
