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NatureSelect.ai Tops $100M in Funding With 5Y Capital-Backed Series A+
The Shenzhen company behind AI companion app EVE and agent social network Elys adds 5Y Capital, Qiming and Matrix Partners China.
Nature Select, the Chinese AI companionship company behind NatureSelect.ai, has closed a Series A+ round that pushes its total funding past $100 million, according to Dealroom. The extension added tens of millions of dollars, per Startup Researcher, though the exact size of this tranche was not disclosed.
Investors in the new round include 5Y Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Source Code Capital and Matrix Partners China.
The cap table points to strategic interest from both China's largest internet groups and its most active venture firms. Alibaba and Ant Group backed the company's earlier 2026 raise of more than $30 million, and the Series A+ brings in a roster of established investors on top of them. Together, the two tranches give Nature Select one of the larger war chests among Chinese startups focused on consumer AI companionship, a category that has drawn both heavy user engagement and growing regulatory attention.
Who Is Behind Nature Select
The company was founded in Shenzhen in 2024 by Zhang Xiaofan, who previously founded the game studio Ultimate Illusion. It now employs more than 100 people and builds its products on in-house models, including a dialogue model called Vibe and a memory model called Echo.
EVE and Elys
Nature Select's flagship app, EVE, is a 3D AI companion that lets users text and video-call virtual characters. After enough interaction, the characters can send real-world treats, such as milk tea, to a user's address, a feature designed to push companionship beyond the screen.
Its second product, Elys, is an invitation-only social network where each user creates an AI version of themselves. That avatar posts, browses and interacts with others on the user's behalf, and the user decides which connections are worth pursuing. Elys drew attention in early 2026 for its "let your clone meet people" pitch and peaked at 100,000 daily active users, run by a team of just over 10 people.
Why Investors Are Still Backing AI Companions
The new money shows investor appetite for AI companionship has not faded, even as regulators in several markets scrutinize the category over concerns about youth use. Nature Select's pitch is that companionship is a gateway to a broader personal-agent business.
The company plans to rework Elys to put those agents front and center. The redesigned app will learn from users' chats and activity, then recommend people, content and services, moving Elys closer to an AI assistant that also runs a social graph. RootData reported that an official version of Elys was expected in November.
What Comes Next
Personal agents are a crowded field, with large Chinese and U.S. platforms building similar features into existing apps. Nature Select's advantage is a product that already has engaged users and its own models tuned for emotional conversation.
With more than $100 million raised and a roster that now spans Alibaba, Ant Group, 5Y Capital and Qiming, the company has the runway to test whether a companion app can grow into a mainstream agent platform.
Source
Dealroom — AI companion startup Nature Select tops $100M after Series A extension