Fund of the week: Hankang Capital

Hankang Capital is a Shanghai venture capital manager that has spent sixteen years writing early cheques into Chinese biotech, and whose portfolio companies now sit on one of the densest royalty stacks in the asset class.

The firm was founded on 10 September 2010 as Shanghai Jianxin Equity Investment Management Co., Ltd. It registered with the Asset Management Association of China as a private equity and venture capital fund manager on 26 May 2014, and later renamed itself Hankang. Yuan Quanhong has held 80 percent of the management company and the chairman and general manager titles since incorporation.

Two naming artefacts need clearing before anything else. PitchBook describes Hankang as the corporate venture arm of a "Zhongjianxin Group". No such group could be located in the Chinese corporate record, and the claim is inconsistent with the founder's 80 percent ownership and with Hankang's own statement that it has backed over fifty companies.

The original "Jianxin" brand also has no connection to China Construction Bank or to CCB Trust, which trades under the same two characters. Jianxin is Mr Yuan's own house brand, and it recurs across several entities he controls, including Shanghai Jianxin Venture Capital and Beijing Hankang Jianxin Venture Capital.

The mandate is narrow. Biopharmaceuticals, diagnostics and medical devices, with a stated focus on major diseases and unmet clinical need, and a preference for backing first-time teams at Series A and holding through to listing.

Hankang holds no purchased royalties and no revenue interests. It has never announced one.

What makes it worth a royalty desk's time is the counterparty layer. Six of its portfolio companies are now listed. Between them they hold running royalties payable by Summit Therapeutics, Merck KGaA, AstraZeneca, Zenas BioPharma, Gilead, Dianthus, BioNTech, GSK and Genentech. Two private positions hold royalties payable by a company about to complete a Nasdaq reverse merger, at rates disclosed in that merger's registration statement.

One of those streams is live this quarter. Ivonescimab, discovered by Akeso and licensed to Summit in 2022 at a low double-digit royalty, beat pembrolizumab monotherapy on overall survival on 2 September and faces a US approval decision on 14 November.

None of those economics belong to the fund. All of them were originated by capital the fund put in.

Equity flows out from the fund and royalties flow back only as far as the portfolio company. Hankang has never bought a royalty or a revenue interest.

Currency note: renminbi figures are converted at approximately RMB 7.15 per US dollar and Hong Kong dollar figures at approximately HK$7.78 per US dollar, being late-August 2026 rates, with the original in brackets. Where a source published its own conversion, that figure is used. Historical figures converted at these rates do not reflect the exchange rate prevailing at the transaction date.

At a glance

• What it is: an independent renminbi and US dollar venture manager focused on Chinese innovative-drug development, investing third-party limited partner capital; not a corporate venture arm despite several vendor profiles saying otherwise
• Manager entity: Shanghai Hankang Private Fund Management Co., Ltd. (上海汉康私募基金管理有限公司), incorporated 10 September 2010, registered capital RMB 100M ($14M), AMAC-registered 26 May 2014, manager record 101000003402
• Former names: Shanghai Jianxin Equity Investment Management Co., Ltd., Shanghai Hankang Equity Investment Management Co., Ltd.
• Registered office: relocated on 18 March 2025 from the Lingang New Area of the Shanghai free trade zone to 738 Dongfang Road, Pudong
• Assets under management: approximately $700M as stated in the DualityBio listing document filed in early 2025; the National SME Development Fund states approximately RMB 5B ($699M), which is the same number in the other currency
• Named fund vehicles, offshore: Hankang Biotech Fund III, L.P. and Splendid Biotech Fund L.P., both Cayman Islands limited partnerships
• Named fund vehicles, onshore: Hankang SME Development Fund (Weifang) Partnership, established May 2022 in Weifang, Shandong, RMB 1.7B ($238M)
• Disclosed limited partner: the National SME Development Fund Co., Ltd., the state fund-of-funds sponsored by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in the Weifang vehicle
• Headcount: 16 covered by social insurance as of 2023; Tracxn records five investment professionals
• Founder and chief executive: Yuan Quanhong, previously at Shanghai Industrial Pharmaceutical Group and Shanghai Renji Medical Group, Zhejiang University management master's (2001) and CEIBS MBA (2008), council member of the H50 healthcare investment forum and of the innovation investment committee of the China Pharmaceutical Innovation and Research Development Association
• Listed portfolio companies: Akeso (9926.HK), InnoCare (9969.HK and 688428.SH), Keymed Biosciences (2162.HK), Abbisko (2256.HK), DualityBio (9606.HK), Leads Biolabs (9887.HK), Chipscreen Biosciences (688321.SH), OPM Biosciences (688293.SH), Wuhan Hiteck (300683.SZ); the first six are named as Hankang portfolio companies in the DualityBio listing document
• Portfolio size, as the firm states it: over fifty companies backed since 2010
• Most recent disclosed investments: AusperBio's $120M Series C on 27 August 2026, and Pinnacle Medicines' $89M Series B on 26 March 2026
• Royalty interests held by the fund: none identified
• Awards: Zero2IPO top 100 venture capital institutions, top 20 healthcare investment institutions, and top 50 most LP-recognised venture institutions in China

A note on names. Hankang Asset Management Ltd, a Hong Kong alternative investment manager carried by Bloomberg under a similar name, is a different firm with no relationship to the Shanghai biotech investor described here.

A note on scope

Hankang publishes little. There is no public website, no portfolio page, no fund list, no performance disclosure and no press release cadence. The firm maintains a LinkedIn account that posts portfolio milestones and stopped updating regularly after 2023.

Everything quantitative in this piece therefore comes from three places: the Chinese corporate and AMAC registries, listing documents filed by portfolio companies that were required to describe their pre-IPO shareholders, and SEC filings by the counterparties those portfolio companies licensed to.

The sequence in that third channel runs like this. A private Shanghai fund's economics become visible because a San Diego biotech it never invested in decided to merge into a Connecticut shell.

Vendor coverage is inconsistent. CB Insights records six investments. Tracxn records eight companies. Crunchbase records twenty-eight. PitchBook records ninety investments and nineteen exits. VBData records forty portfolio companies across sixty financing events, with twenty-nine having progressed to a subsequent round. No two agree, and the spread is wide enough that any position count quoted for this firm should be treated as a lower bound.

The firm's own number, given in conference materials, is over fifty companies. That sits between the vendor extremes and is the only figure with a first-party source behind it, so it is the one used here.

Disclosed investment counts for one manager, by data vendor, against the firm's own statement. Square-root scale.

Investment thesis and mandate

The stated mission is to empower biomedical innovation and safeguard life wellness, and to work with first-tier scientists and entrepreneurs on breakthrough treatments for major diseases. Hankang describes itself as based in China with a global outlook.

In practice the pattern is consistent across sixteen years. Lead or co-lead an early institutional round in a company built around a single differentiated molecule, usually with a founder who has run development at a multinational, then follow on through every subsequent round to listing.

PharmCube reports that Hankang led Keymed Biosciences' Series A in 2018 and continued in later rounds, though the claim does not appear in Keymed's own filings.

The better-documented cases are its own: it led the Series B+ of at least one portfolio company in June 2021, seeded Pulmongene in 2020 before supporting it through subsequent rounds, led BioEngine's Series C of over RMB 300M ($42M), led AusperBio's $73M Series B in December 2024 and has participated in all three AusperBio rounds since, and joined VelaVigo's Pre-A+ of over $60M in July 2025 alongside Shunwei Capital as lead.

The therapeutic bias is antibodies, bispecifics, antibody-drug conjugates and oligonucleotides. Oncology and autoimmune disease dominate, with hepatitis B and fibrosis representing the main departures.

There is no royalty, credit, structured finance or revenue-interest mandate anywhere in the firm's stated activity.

What the firm does have, and what distinguishes it from most Chinese healthcare venture managers of its vintage, is a hit rate on out-licensing. Its companies do not primarily monetise by selling drugs in China. They monetise by licensing ex-China rights to Western developers, which is where the royalties come from.

How capital enters and returns

Capital comes from limited partners into parallel renminbi and US dollar structures. Returns have arrived by the following routes.

Domestic listing. Chipscreen Biosciences listed on the STAR Market in 2019, OPM Biosciences in 2022, and InnoCare took a secondary STAR listing in 2022 on top of its 2020 Hong Kong listing. Wuhan Hiteck has been listed on ChiNext since 2017.

Hong Kong listing. Akeso listed in 2020, Keymed in 2021, Abbisko in 2021, DualityBio in April 2025 and Leads Biolabs in 2025. This is now the primary exit channel, and two of the nine listings came in 2025.

Secondary purchases ahead of a listing. Hankang has used this route at least once, and the transaction is fully documented. On 12 December 2024 the two Cayman vehicles bought 1,205,223 Series A-1 preferred shares of DualityBio from King Star Med for $6.0M, split $4.0M to Hankang Biotech Fund III and $2.0M to Splendid Biotech Fund, at $4.978 per share.

Settlement was the following day. DualityBio listed four months later at HK$94.60 per share, approximately $12.16, roughly 2.4 times the entry price, and closed its first day at HK$205, approximately $26.35, roughly 5.3 times.

The two vehicles held 1.77 percent of the company immediately before listing, 1.18 percent in Fund III and 0.59 percent in Splendid. Both gave lock-up undertakings to the joint sponsors. Whether either has sold since is not disclosed anywhere.

Trading since has been volatile. It traded at approximately HK$195.70 on 26 August 2026, against a 52-week range of HK$158.50 to HK$563.50 and a market capitalisation of roughly HK$29.2B ($3.75B). At that price the December 2024 entry is still marked at about four times cost, and the position is above both the HK$94.60 offer and the HK$205 first-day close.

DualityBio, from the December 2024 secondary purchase to August 2026, and the multiple on cost at each mark. The horizontal axis is not a time scale.

That transaction is the only entry price Hankang has ever had published, and it exists solely because Chapter 4.2 of the HKEX Listing Guide required DualityBio to disclose it.

Financial profile and assets

Fund-level participation amounts in every round cited are undisclosed. The figures above are round totals across all investors.

The portfolio book

Listed companies with live out-licensing royalties. Akeso, InnoCare, Keymed Biosciences, Abbisko, DualityBio and Leads Biolabs. This is where the royalty content sits and it is covered in detail below.

Listed companies without royalty economics. Chipscreen Biosciences, the Shenzhen epigenetics company behind chidamide. OPM Biosciences, a Shanghai cell-culture media and CDMO business selling product and service rather than licensing molecules, named as a Hankang portfolio company in the DualityBio listing document. Wuhan Hiteck, a ChiNext-listed pharmaceutical manufacturer.

A caution on that middle name. OPM Biosciences and BioEngine are two separate Chinese serum-free cell-culture media companies, and the one Hankang says it led is BioEngine, which is private. OPM appears in the DualityBio listing document and is included on that basis. Anyone reading a vendor profile that merges the two is reading an error.

Private positions. AusperBio, the hepatitis B oligonucleotide company with operations in Hangzhou and California, now in Phase 3 in China with AHB-137 and building commercial infrastructure in parallel. VelaVigo, the Shanghai and Boston bispecific and ADC discovery company running an explicit business development plus venture capital model. Pinnacle Medicines, the Shanghai and Doylestown oral peptide company incubated by OrbiMed.

BioEngine, the serum-free cell-culture media company whose Series C of over RMB 300M ($42M) Hankang led. Pulmongene, in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Huahui Health, whose HH-003 for chronic hepatitis D received a China breakthrough therapy designation in 2023. China Immunotech, in cell therapy. Beijing Eastern Biotech, Suzhou Teligene, Xiamen LP Pharma, Microwave Bio and SciBrunch Therapeutics.

Investors

There is no published limited partner roster. One LP is confirmed by that LP's own disclosure: the National SME Development Fund Co., Ltd. is a sponsor of the Weifang vehicle, which it lists among its sub-funds at RMB 1.7B ($238M).

That single data point tells you most of what the structure implies. The National SME Development Fund is a state fund-of-funds under the Ministry of Finance and MIIT, restructured into corporate form in 2020 with registered capital of approximately RMB 35.75B ($5.0B). By the end of 2023 it had established around twenty sub-funds totalling close to RMB 60B ($8.4B), which puts the Weifang vehicle at roughly three percent of that programme.

Its sub-fund commitments come with a policy overlay: local registration, in this case Shandong, and an expectation of domestic small and medium enterprise development. The Weifang vehicle is a policy-anchored renminbi fund, not a discretionary global pool.

The Cayman vehicles are a separate matter. Hankang Biotech Fund III, L.P. is managed by Hankang Biotech III, LLC, ultimately owned by Meichai Zhang. Splendid Biotech Fund L.P. is managed by Pole Star Biotech LLC, ultimately owned by Quanhong Yuan, who is Ms Zhang's spouse. Both were confirmed to DualityBio's sponsors as independent third parties, and both are described in the listing document as operating under Hankang Capital.

Naming a "Fund III" in the offshore series implies at least two predecessor US dollar vehicles. Neither has been identified in public sources, and no fund sizes for any of the offshore vehicles have ever been published.

For anyone underwriting this manager, the renminbi and US dollar sides answer to different constituencies. State fund-of-funds capital has policy objectives and a domestic listing preference. Offshore capital in Cayman partnerships is buying ex-China licensing outcomes.

Hankang runs both against the same portfolio, and the DualityBio transaction shows the offshore vehicles buying secondary in dollars into a Cayman-domiciled issuer four months before a Hong Kong listing.

Governance and team

The public record on the firm is largely a record of Yuan Quanhong. He is the legal representative, chairman, general manager and chief executive, has held 80 percent of the management company since 2010, and is the named investor on the founding positions in Beijing Eastern Biotech, InnoCare, Abbisko, Chipscreen, Akeso and LP Pharma.

He came out of Shanghai Industrial Pharmaceutical Group and Shanghai Renji Medical Group, took a management master's at Zhejiang University in 2001 and a CEIBS MBA in 2008, and sits on the councils of the H50 forum and the PhIRDA innovation investment committee.

Below him the public record is thin. Company profiles and vendor records name Chloe Chen, or Chen Yuedan, as managing director; Pengchong Wang as vice president of investment; and Rui Zhao as senior advisor. Crunchbase adds that Ms Chen was previously a director at Sherpa Healthcare Partners, which no primary source confirms.

Cao Yongjian has been recorded as investment director, having come from Yongwei Investment and CITIC Securities. Tracxn records five people, three of them partners, and notes that none currently sits on a portfolio company board.

Sixteen employees were covered by social insurance in 2023. A 2024 legal recruitment posting for the firm sought a qualified lawyer with three to five years at a law firm or a well-known PE or VC house, to run fundraising documentation, LP due diligence responses, advisory committee papers and investor reporting, which is a reasonable indication that the firm was actively raising at the time.

No fund-level compensation, carry arrangement or performance benchmark has been published.

Concentration risk on one individual is the obvious structural feature. A manager of this size with a single named principal across every founding position carries key-person exposure that no disclosure addresses.

IP, royalties, and the economics of return

Hankang holds no royalty. Its portfolio companies hold a great many. Set out below in descending order of how much of the economics is visible.

Royalty bands on Hankang portfolio assets, as stated in the licensee's filings. Every band is a verbal range converted to numbers on the mapping shown; no filing gives a figure.

Akeso and Summit

The December 2022 agreement granting Summit Therapeutics rights to ivonescimab, the PD-1 and VEGF bispecific, in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan carries a $500M upfront, up to $4.5B in milestones for a headline deal value of $5B, and a low double-digit percentage royalty on net product sales. Summit's licensed territory has since been described as extending to Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

That upfront was structured so the licensor took equity risk alongside the royalty. The $500M came in two instalments, $300M and $200M, and Akeso converted approximately $25.1M of the first into ten million Summit shares. The milestone ladder splits into up to $1.05B regulatory and up to $3.45B commercial, which means the great majority of the contingent value sits behind commercial performance rather than approval.

By potential value this is the largest single royalty in the Hankang orbit, and the clinical case behind it has been built almost entirely on beating Merck's pembrolizumab.

Ivonescimab has been approved in China since May 2024. HARMONi-2 gave it the first randomised Phase 3 win over pembrolizumab monotherapy on progression-free survival, at a hazard ratio of 0.51, which supported a China monotherapy authorisation in April 2025. On 2 September 2026 Akeso reported that the same trial's preplanned overall survival analysis also favoured ivonescimab, statistically significantly, over pembrolizumab.

No figures were released and detailed results go to a future congress. Overall survival against a PD-1 monotherapy is the endpoint that moves a first-line standard of care, and it is the endpoint the ex-China royalty ultimately rests on.

The rest of the programme reads consistently. HARMONi-6 took the plenary slot at ASCO 2026, the first China-developed asset to do so, and its interim overall survival analysis in The Lancet showed ivonescimab plus chemotherapy cutting the risk of death by 34 percent against tislelizumab plus chemotherapy in squamous non-small cell lung cancer, at a hazard ratio of 0.66 and median overall survival of 27.9 months against 23.7.

On 25 August 2026 HARMONi-GI1, a 682-patient Chinese registrational study, met its overall survival primary endpoint against durvalumab plus chemotherapy in first-line biliary tract cancer, the first positive Phase 3 for the asset outside lung cancer, again without figures.

Summit counts five positive Phase 3 trials to date. HARMONi-3 in squamous disease did not cross its interim efficacy threshold and continues, with final progression-free survival data due in the second half of 2026.

All of that except HARMONi is Akeso's own single-region Chinese data, which is the structural feature a buyer of this royalty would have to underwrite. Summit's global trial met progression-free survival and has produced an overall survival trend that strengthens with follow-up: the July 2026 update put Western patients at a hazard ratio of 0.76, consistent with the Asian cohort, and the primary analysis has since been published in The Lancet Oncology, with further follow-up due at the World Conference on Lung Cancer on 15 September 2026. Summit's BLA in EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer after TKI therapy was accepted for filing on 29 January 2026, with a PDUFA goal action date of 14 November 2026 and roughly 14,000 eligible US patients a year in that setting.

Summit has also opened HARMONi-GU1 in urothelial carcinoma, with global site activations planned from the fourth quarter of 2026. Whether it pursues biliary tract cancer in its own territories, and whether it would bridge from a China-only dataset, it has not said.

The payer is the weaker half of the structure. Summit is pre-revenue, established a $380M at-the-market equity programme on 23 July 2026, and traded at $14.60 on 10 August for a market capitalisation of $10.91B, down roughly 39 percent over the prior year. The HARMONi-2 result moved it about 28 percent in a week, to $17.63 on 7 September for $14.04B, against a 52-week range of $12.07 to $29.23 and an all-time closing high of $36.70 in April 2025.

Akeso's own shares have tracked the same path, at HK$94.50 on 26 August against a 52-week range of HK$80.20 to HK$179.00 for a market capitalisation of roughly HK$86.2B ($11.1B), with analyst consensus above the market at around HK$174.55. Five positive Phase 3 trials and a payer funding itself through an ATM ahead of its first approval decision are two different questions, and a royalty underwriting has to answer both.

None of which makes this royalty purchasable. A low double-digit rate on a first-line lung cancer asset, held by a Hong Kong-listed issuer with an independent China franchise and a nine-figure milestone ladder still to run, is not a monetisation candidate in any conventional sense. The largest royalty in this portfolio is also the least available, and the 14 November decision will change its value without changing that.

InnoCare and Zenas

The October 2025 agreement is the most fully disclosed of these, because Zenas BioPharma files with the SEC.

InnoCare granted Zenas orelabrutinib in multiple sclerosis worldwide and in all non-oncology indications outside greater China and Southeast Asia, plus worldwide rights to ZB021, an IL-17AA/AF inhibitor, and ZB022, a TYK2 inhibitor. Zenas paid $35.0M in cash and issued five million shares, with a further $25.0M and two million shares due on a near-term milestone.

The rates are in the Zenas 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026: high single digits to high teens on orelabrutinib net sales, and mid single digits to mid teens on the two preclinical compounds. Milestones run to $723.0M on orelabrutinib and, per the Zenas annual report, up to $656.0M on ZB021 and ZB022 taken together, for a package the two companies described as exceeding $2B.

Zenas paid a $20.0M regulatory milestone on ZB022 during the second quarter of 2026, and raised a concurrent $120.0M private placement when the licence was signed.

A high-teens ceiling on a Phase 3 multiple sclerosis asset sits at the top of the range for an out-licence of that stage, and it is disclosed to the basis point range in a quarterly filing.

The same filing carries a comparable. On 2 September 2025 Zenas sold Royalty Pharma a synthetic royalty on obexelimab worth up to $300.0M: a $75.0M upfront followed by three further payments of $75.0M each, in exchange for 5.5 percent of worldwide net sales by Zenas and its affiliates, 5.5 percent of licensee net sales in the United States, United Kingdom and European Union, and 25 percent of royalty income from licensees elsewhere net of Zenas' own obligations to Xencor.

That is a monetisation executed by the licensee of an InnoCare asset, on a different asset, at a rate a buyer was willing to underwrite and in a staged structure tied to development progress. It is the closest thing to a price mark anywhere in this network, though on a different asset and a different balance sheet.

Keymed Biosciences

Keymed has out-licensed five programmes and now generates more collaboration revenue than product revenue.

CMG901, now sonesitatug vedotin, the Claudin 18.2 ADC, was licensed globally to AstraZeneca in February 2023 for a $63M upfront, up to $1.1B in development and sales milestones, and tiered royalties running up to the low double digits. The asset is owned by KYM Biosciences Inc., a joint venture 70 percent held by Keymed and 30 percent by Lepu Biopharma, which splits the royalty across two listed issuers. AstraZeneca dosed the first patient in the CLARITY-Gastric 02 global Phase 3 in first-line gastric cancer in February 2026, and KYM received a $45M milestone in early March 2026.

CM336, the BCMA and CD3 bispecific, followed a longer chain. Keymed licensed it in November 2024 to Platina Medicines, a NewCo, in a package worth roughly $626M; the asset then sat with Ouro Medicines. On 5 June 2026 Gilead and Lakefront Biotherapeutics, the Euronext and Nasdaq-listed company formerly known as Galapagos, completed the acquisition of Ouro for up to $2.175B, split $1.675B upfront and up to $500M in milestones and shared evenly between the two buyers.

Keymed's H1 2026 results record a $257M upfront received by its subsidiary iBridge Hong Kong, eligibility for up to $70M in additional milestones and up to $610M under the surviving licence, and tiered royalties that Gilead describes as running from high single digits to the mid double digits.

A mid-double-digit ceiling on net sales sits outside the usual range for an out-licence, and if it holds it implies a profit-share dressed as a royalty. One secondary account puts Lakefront's leg at 20 to 23 percent of net sales. Neither figure has been tied to a rate table in a filing, so both should be treated as unconfirmed.

CM313, the CD38 antibody, went to Timberlyne Therapeutics on 10 January 2025 for $30M in upfront and near-term payments within a package of roughly $367.5M, with Keymed becoming Timberlyne's largest shareholder. CM512 and CM536 went to Belenos Biosciences in July 2024 for $15M upfront, $170M in milestones, a sales royalty, and 30.01 percent of Belenos equity for Keymed's Hong Kong subsidiary, with OrbiMed holding 50.26 percent.

CM355, the CD20 and CD3 bispecific, went to Prolium Bioscience in January 2025 for $17.5M in combined upfront and near-term payments, up to $502.5M in milestones, royalties, and Prolium equity. The asset is co-owned with InnoCare, so a single Prolium royalty is divided between two Hankang portfolio companies that are also each other's counterparties.

Keymed reported H1 2026 revenue of RMB 617M ($86M), of which RMB 393M ($55M) was Kangyueda product sales and RMB 224M ($31M) was collaboration income, and a profit of RMB 1,220M ($171M) against a prior-period loss, with cash of RMB 3.24B ($453M).

The equity-plus-royalty structure Keymed used with Belenos and Timberlyne takes the same shape as the Hengrui and Hercules arrangement, and it keeps a Chinese licensor exposed to ex-China commercial value through two instruments at once.

Abbisko and Merck KGaA

Pimicotinib, the CSF-1R inhibitor, was licensed to Merck KGaA in December 2023 for greater China with a global option, at a $70M upfront. Merck exercised the global option on 1 April 2025 for an $85M fee. Aggregate upfront, option and milestone payments run to $605.5M, plus a double-digit percentage royalty on annual net sales.

The NMPA approved pimicotinib in China in December 2025, the first Chemical Drug Class 1 approval for tenosynovial giant cell tumour. The FDA accepted the NDA on 12 January 2026 and the review was ongoing at the research date. Neither Merck KGaA nor Abbisko has published a PDUFA date, and none could be found; a single low-quality aggregator asserts the drug has been approved, which no primary source supports and which should be disregarded. Abbisko states that further applications are under review by regulators in other markets without naming them.

The EMA has granted PRIME designation and orphan drug designation, and the FDA has added fast track to the existing breakthrough therapy designation.

Abbisko's accounts have already changed shape as a result. Abbisko reported FY2024 revenue of approximately RMB 504M ($70M) and its first profit, of no less than RMB 10M ($1.4M), against a prior-year loss, attributed to the Merck upfront. The $85M option fee was recognised in 2025. Neither of those is a royalty; they are the pre-royalty payments, and they show a company whose income statement is now driven by one out-licence.

Of the positions here, this one has the fewest open variables for a royalty buyer. An approved, marketed product in one territory and an accepted US filing in another; a double-digit rate; an investment-grade payer in Merck KGaA; a rare tumour indication with a defined addressable population; and a licensor with a Hong Kong listing and a disclosure obligation.

The competition is real, with Daiichi Sankyo's pexidartinib and Ono's vimseltinib both approved, and the rate tiers, term and territory splits are not public.

DualityBio

DualityBio's partnership book was valued at over $5.0B of potential deal value at the time of its listing document, rose to over $6.0B in sell-side coverage, and stands at more than $7.0B across seven global collaborations in the company's H1 2026 results, with Genentech added since listing.

The counterparties are BioNTech on DB-1303, DB-1311 and DB-1305, GSK on DB-1324 under an exclusive option, BeOne on DB-1312, Adcendo on DITAC payload-linkers, Avenzo on DB-1418, Genentech, and 3SBio as a China promotion partner for DB-1303. Roughly $500M of that headline value had been received by the time of the listing document.

Individual royalty rates have not been disclosed in any counterparty filing. DB-1303 and BNT323 met the primary progression-free survival endpoint in Phase 3 in HER2-positive breast cancer in September 2025, and in May 2026 DualityBio served written notice to exercise its cost and profit-share option on DB-1311 with BioNTech, which converts part of a royalty position into a co-development economics position.

VelaVigo, and the visibility mechanic

VelaVigo is a private company whose royalty rates are public. How that happened is the part of this piece that generalises.

Hankang's position is confirmed. VelaVigo has raised a $50M angel round in November 2021, a Pre-A of roughly $50M in December 2024, and a Pre-A+ of over $60M closed in July 2025 led by Shunwei Capital, in which Hankang participated alongside NLVC, Everest VC, HighLight Capital, Shanghai Healthcare Capital and Lingang Lanwan.

VelaVigo granted Avenzo Therapeutics an option on a Nectin4 and TROP2 bispecific ADC, now VBC103 or AVZO-103, on 16 November 2024, for ex-greater-China rights. Avenzo paid $17.0M upfront in January 2025 and a $28.0M option exercise fee in the third quarter of 2025, taking upfront and option payments to $45M, with up to approximately $750M in further milestones and tiered royalties. Two $5.0M development milestones have followed: one recorded in the third quarter of 2025 and paid in the fourth, one recorded in the second quarter of 2026 and payable in the third.

Avenzo then agreed a reverse merger with Rallybio, announced on 1 June 2026 under a definitive agreement dated 31 May, backed by a $215M private placement, with the ticker changing to AVZO. On a fully diluted basis the S-4 puts pre-merger Avenzo holders at 56.6 percent, the concurrent financing investors at 40.6 percent and Rallybio shareholders at 2.8 percent.

The placement syndicate runs to Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing, T. Rowe Price, Vivo Capital, Affinity Asset Advisors, ADAR1, OrbiMed, SR One, Foresite, Surveyor Capital, Longwood, NEA and Deep Track. Closing was expected in the fourth quarter of 2026 and had not occurred at the research date.

That merger required a registration statement. The Rallybio Form S-4, filed on 15 July 2026, states that VelaVigo is eligible for tiered royalties ranging from the mid single digits to the low double digits on applicable annual net sales in the Avenzo territory. The underlying licence agreement is filed as an exhibit, but every financial term inside it, including the rate table itself, is redacted, so the band in the narrative body is the whole of what is public.

The same S-4 describes a separate Avenzo licence from Allorion Therapeutics for its CDK2 and CDK4 programmes at a band of mid single digits to low teens. Those are different assets on different rates, and conflating the two produces a VelaVigo figure that is wrong in both direction and magnitude.

A private Shanghai biotech's royalty rate band on an ADC is now a matter of US public record because its licensee needed a listing. The same disclosure also names DualityBio and Allorion as sources of Avenzo's other assets, which means one filing lit up two Hankang positions at once.

Five filings, none of them Hankang's, and the economics each one disclosed.

VelaVigo's second deal, announced in April 2025, granted Ollin Biosciences near-global rights to VBS-102, a first-in-class bispecific antibody, for up to approximately $440M in cash and equity plus tiered royalties on sales in Ollin's territory. Ollin is private, associated with Arch Venture Partners, and files nothing, so both the upfront and the rates remain unpublished.

Leads Biolabs

Leads Biolabs granted Dianthus Therapeutics ex-greater-China global rights to LBL-047, now DNTH212, its BDCA2 and TACI dual-targeting asset, on 16 October 2025, at a potential total value of up to $1B. The near-term economics are disclosed: $20M upfront, a further $5M in the fourth quarter of 2025, and up to $13M in additional near-term payments, for $38M before milestones, with tiered royalties running from mid single digits to low double digits.

Dianthus began Phase 1 dosing in December 2025, with healthy-volunteer top-line data expected in the second half of 2026.

Its lead asset LBL-024, a PD-L1 and 4-1BB bispecific and the first 4-1BB-targeted molecule anywhere to reach registrational stage, remains wholly owned, with a China BLA in extrapulmonary neuroendocrine carcinoma expected around the third quarter of 2026. An unpartnered registrational asset at a company that has already shown it will license is the configuration that produces the next royalty in this portfolio.

Where royalties do not exist

Chipscreen Biosciences, OPM Biosciences and Wuhan Hiteck sell product. AusperBio and Pinnacle Medicines have not announced any out-licensing, and Pinnacle in particular is explicit that it has no strategic partnerships or licensing agreements. Pulmongene, Huahui Health and China Immunotech have no disclosed licensing economics.

Portfolio, as of August 2026

Stakes and entry valuations are undisclosed in every position except DualityBio.

Blue team and red team

Blue team

• Six listed positions carrying live out-licensing royalties, with counterparties including AstraZeneca, Merck KGaA, Gilead, BioNTech, GSK and Summit Therapeutics, one of which faces a US approval decision on 14 November 2026 on an asset that has now beaten pembrolizumab monotherapy on overall survival
• Sixteen years of continuous operation under one principal, with the earliest positions dating to a period when almost no institutional Chinese biotech venture capital existed
• A demonstrated ability to get into rounds that global specialists lead: OrbiMed, RA Capital, Foresite, LAV, Qiming and CDH all appear as co-investors in the recent book
• Five Hong Kong listings and four mainland listings among portfolio companies, giving a realised exit channel that many peers of the same vintage lack
• State fund-of-funds capital from the National SME Development Fund provides an anchor LP with a long horizon and no distribution clock of the kind a commercial fund faces
• The only published entry price, the December 2024 DualityBio secondary at $4.978 per share against a HK$94.60 offer four months later, shows a manager buying pre-listing paper at a large discount
• Parallel renminbi and US dollar structures let the firm follow companies through offshore restructuring, which is where the ex-China licensing value accrues
• The out-licensing intensity across the book means portfolio companies fund themselves on non-dilutive capital, which reduces the follow-on burden on the fund

Red team

• No purchased royalty, revenue interest or structured credit anywhere; every royalty in this piece belongs to a counterparty, not to the fund
• Fund sizes, LP roster, portfolio stakes, entry valuations and performance are unpublished; the $700M AUM figure appears in a listing document filed by a portfolio company and has no independent confirmation
• Disclosed investment counts range from six to ninety across five vendors, which means no reliable measurement of the book exists
• Whether Hankang still holds any listed position is unknown; no Hankang entity appears in any 2025 or 2026 substantial-shareholder or top-ten shareholder table for any of the nine listed companies, which is consistent with stakes diluted below the disclosure threshold but is not evidence of retention either way
• The two largest royalty payers in the book are not investment grade. Summit is pre-revenue and funding itself through a $380M ATM programme ahead of its first approval decision, and Zenas has already sold a synthetic royalty on its own lead asset to raise cash. Both payers' capacity to pay a running royalty depends on approvals that have not happened yet
• The Gilead and Lakefront royalty band on CM336, described as reaching the mid double digits, is outside the normal range for a running royalty and has never been tied to a rate table in a filing; a secondary account puts it at 20 to 23 percent, and neither figure can be verified
• Concentration on Yuan Quanhong: sole named principal, 80 percent owner, and the investor of record on every founding position
• The two Cayman vehicles are managed by entities owned respectively by Mr Yuan and his spouse, a related-party structure that was disclosed and cleared for the DualityBio listing but which has no further public explanation
• Team depth is minimal, with sixteen insured employees and five investment professionals recorded, none currently on a portfolio company board
• The state fund-of-funds relationship carries a policy overlay, including local registration in Shandong, that constrains where capital can be deployed
• Every royalty described here is a China-origin licence, which means the whole book carries correlated exposure to US policy on Chinese-originated assets, to the BIOSECURE line of legislation, and to any tightening of outbound or inbound investment rules
• Concentration in oncology bispecifics and ADCs means the portfolio's licensing values move together; a repricing of the China ADC licensing market would hit six positions at once
• The clinical case for the largest royalty rests mostly on single-region Chinese trials. Of the five positive Phase 3 studies, only HARMONi is global, and the 14 November decision turns on how the FDA reads that distinction
• The firm has no public website and no published portfolio, so any counterparty or LP conducting diligence starts from registry filings rather than from disclosure

Implications for the pharmaceutical royalty and biotech capital markets

Chinese venture managers are the largest unmapped population of royalty originators. Hankang holds nothing. Its portfolio companies hold royalties payable by six investment-grade or well-capitalised Western developers across at least a dozen assets, with disclosed rate bands running from mid single digits to high teens.

The same will be true of Qiming, LAV, CDH, Sherpa, Huagai, Oriza and a long tail of smaller Shanghai and Suzhou managers. A screen built on portfolio company disclosure rather than on manager disclosure would surface a meaningful population of Chinese royalty holders, many of them listed in Hong Kong with a reporting obligation, and many of them at a stage where monetisation solves a real financing need.

The counterparty's reporting obligation is the diligence entry point, and it now runs through reverse mergers. VelaVigo's royalty rate band on its Avenzo ADC is public because Rallybio filed an S-4. This is the same mechanic that made the AprilBio rates public through Evommune's S-1, and it is becoming systematic: the wave of US biotechs built on in-licensed Chinese assets, and the reverse-merger route many of them are taking to Nasdaq, is generating a stream of registration statements that disclose Chinese licensors' economics in a level of detail those licensors would never publish themselves.

Anyone underwriting a Chinese private royalty should start with the counterparty's filings, and should specifically monitor shell mergers, PIPE-backed listings and S-4 filings as a disclosure event class.

Joint-venture and equity-plus-royalty structures split royalties across issuers in ways that complicate underwriting. CMG901's royalty from AstraZeneca sits in KYM Biosciences, 70 percent Keymed and 30 percent Lepu Biopharma, both Hong Kong-listed. Keymed's Belenos deal gave it a sales royalty and 30.01 percent of the licensee, alongside OrbiMed at 50.26 percent. Its Timberlyne deal made it the licensee's largest shareholder.

These are increasingly common in China out-licensing and they mean that a royalty on a single asset can be held fractionally across two listed companies and an unlisted NewCo, with equity and royalty economics entangled. Buying one leg of that requires understanding the whole structure, and the standard single-counterparty diligence template does not fit.

Nobody in this network has sold a royalty, and the reasons are structural rather than accidental. No Chinese healthcare venture manager, Hankang or peer, has been found to have executed a royalty monetisation, synthetic royalty or revenue-interest transaction.

Nor has any of Hankang's portfolio companies sold a stream. The one monetisation anywhere in the chain runs the other way: Zenas, a US licensee of an InnoCare asset, sold Royalty Pharma up to $300.0M against 5.5 percent of obexelimab. Chinese licensors have preferred to keep equity in the offshore NewCo rather than sell the royalty, because equity captures the whole ex-China outcome and a royalty captures a slice, and Keymed's 30.01 percent of Belenos and largest-shareholder positions in Timberlyne and Prolium are that preference made explicit.

And selling a future renminbi-originated royalty stream to an offshore buyer runs into China's outbound capital and foreign exchange framework, which makes the cash mechanics harder than the credit analysis. Anyone planning to originate in this market should assume the first constraint is structuring, not price.

The name in this portfolio that most resembles a live origination candidate is VelaVigo. A private Shanghai company with two royalty-bearing out-licences, one of them at a rate band already in the US public record, an explicit business development plus venture capital model that treats licensing income as its primary funding source, and no listing of its own. That combination is the profile of a licensor with a use for cash today and an asset a buyer can price.

Recent developments

• Ivonescimab beat pembrolizumab monotherapy on overall survival in a preplanned HARMONi-2 analysis reported on 2 September 2026, taking Summit to five positive Phase 3 trials and its shares up about 28 percent over that week to $17.63 on 7 September for a $14.04B market capitalisation; the PDUFA goal action date in EGFR-mutated NSCLC is 14 November 2026
• AusperBio closed a $120M Series C on 27 August 2026, led by an unnamed strategic investor with RA Capital joining as a new investor and Hankang continuing, bringing total capital raised to $360M since 2024; proceeds fund the Phase 3 registrational programme and commercialisation readiness for AHB-137 and the development of AHB-171. This is Hankang's most recent disclosed investment
• Keymed reported H1 2026 results in August 2026 showing revenue of RMB 617M ($86M), a profit of RMB 1,220M ($171M) against a prior loss, cash of RMB 3.24B ($453M), and a $257M upfront from the Gilead and Lakefront acquisition of Ouro Medicines, with eligibility for up to $70M in additional milestones and up to $610M under the existing licence plus tiered royalties
• InnoCare's orelabrutinib received a China breakthrough therapy designation in combination with mesutoclax for marginal zone lymphoma on 3 August 2026, following Australian TGA approval in relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma on 27 May 2026 and a China NDA acceptance in primary immune thrombocytopenia in May 2026
• Zenas paid a $20.0M regulatory milestone to InnoCare on ZB022 during the quarter ended 30 June 2026, the first milestone under the October 2025 licence
• Avenzo agreed a reverse merger with Rallybio on 1 June 2026, backed by a $215M private placement, expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026; the registration statement, filed 15 July 2026, disclosed VelaVigo's tiered royalty band of mid single digits to low double digits and recorded a further $5.0M milestone payable in the third quarter of 2026
• Akeso's ivonescimab met its primary endpoint in biliary tract cancer on 25 August 2026, beating durvalumab plus chemotherapy on overall survival in the 682-patient HARMONi-GI1 study in China; no figures were released, and it is the first positive Phase 3 for the asset outside lung cancer, taking the programme to five positive readouts from five
• Akeso's ivonescimab took the ASCO 2026 plenary slot with HARMONi-6 overall survival data, the first China-developed asset to do so; the interim analysis showed a 34 percent reduction in the risk of death against tislelizumab plus chemotherapy, hazard ratio 0.66, median overall survival 27.9 months against 23.7, with final HARMONi-3 progression-free survival data due in the second half of 2026
• Gilead and Lakefront Biotherapeutics completed the acquisition of Ouro Medicines on 5 June 2026 for up to $2.175B, $1.675B upfront and up to $500M in milestones split evenly, the transaction that produced Keymed's $257M receipt
• Hankang participated in Pinnacle Medicines' $89M Series B on 26 March 2026, co-led by LAV and Foresite Capital with Quan Capital, RA Capital, Logos Capital and OrbiMed
• Keymed's KYM Biosciences received a $45M milestone in early March 2026 following the first patient dosed in AstraZeneca's global Phase 3 for CMG901 in February 2026
• Abbisko's pimicotinib NDA was accepted by the FDA on 12 January 2026, following NMPA approval in December 2025
• No royalty or revenue-interest transaction has been identified at the fund level at any point in the firm's history

Financial history and recent developments

Conclusion

Hankang Capital manages roughly $700M across renminbi and US dollar vehicles, employs fewer than twenty people, publishes nothing, and has one named principal who has held 80 percent of the management company since 2010.

It also sits behind six Hong Kong and mainland-listed biotechs whose combined out-licensing book carries running royalties payable by AstraZeneca, Merck KGaA, Summit, Gilead, Lakefront, BioNTech, GSK, Genentech, Zenas and Dianthus, with disclosed rate bands running from mid single digits to high teens and, in one contested case, to the mid double digits, and aggregate contingent milestones well into the billions. One of its private positions carries a royalty whose rate band is public only because a licensee filed a registration statement in Delaware.

The fund holds none of it, and neither does any Chinese venture manager found in this research. The only royalty sold anywhere in this chain was sold by an American licensee to Royalty Pharma.

One of those streams is about to be repriced by an event that has nothing to do with Hankang. Ivonescimab beat pembrolizumab monotherapy on overall survival on 2 September and faces a US approval decision on 14 November, and the low double-digit royalty that turns on it belongs to Akeso, a company Hankang seeded and whose current stake in it is undisclosed.

What this manager demonstrates, for a royalty desk, is that a mid-sized Chinese venture portfolio assembled with no royalty mandate of any kind produces royalty originations at a density Western corporate venture books do not approach, and that the disclosure needed to price them is already sitting in someone else's filings.

All information in this article was accurate as of September 2026 and is derived from publicly available sources including SEC filings, Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing documents and announcements, Chinese corporate and Asset Management Association of China registry records, company press releases, data-vendor records and financial news reporting. Information may have changed since publication. This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal, or financial advice. The author is not a lawyer or financial adviser.