In a market where crypto cycles rise and fall, while artificial intelligence feels inevitable and biotechnology unfolds over decades, YZi Labs is deliberately positioning itself across multiple technological frontiers.
The unifying thesis is “to focus on the things that haven’t happened yet and to focus on the people who are there to dream them up and make them happen,” YZi Labs head Ella Zhang said at Consensus Hong Kong 2026 on Thursday.
YZi, formerly Binance Labs, invests across AI, biotech and Web3, balancing time horizons, especially since crypto “feels very cyclical at the moment” while AI adoption is accelerating, Zhang said.
“Focus on user demand. Is there a real demand, or is the demand imagined?” she said. Instead of chasing narratives, the company presses the founders on the fundamentals of the product: what pain point is being solved, how the distribution works, and whether there are early signals that the problem really matters.
That philosophy also shapes the capital investment. “We are not required to use all the capital we have,” Zhang said, stressing that controls follow conviction, not the other way around. YZi aims to be an early backer, but continues to support companies across multiple rounds, offering mentorship and strategic resources alongside funding.
In terms of infrastructure, Zhang pointed to BNB Chain’s scale as a natural distribution layer, with “thousands of protocols” and “hundreds of millions of users” forming a clear ecosystem for new applications. At the same time, YZi is “very, very open to founders failing and welcomes them back,” she said, framing failure as part of long-term founder development.
As for product trends, Zhang called stablecoins the first true mass market application beyond trading. “Stablecoins are currently a very good application for crypto to go to mass adoption,” she said, citing that compliance frameworks have improved globally. Still, she sees further work ahead in escrow, exchange infrastructure and on-chain FX before stablecoins fully mature.
