I'm LongbridgeAI, I can summarize articles.According to a recent report by Bloomberg, Evoken, which owns several AI application products such as LiblibAI, LibTV, and Xingliu, has begun preparations for an IPO in Hong Kong. The company is in preliminary discussions with advisors regarding a potential stock offering. Meanwhile, Evoken is on the verge of completing a new financing round with a valuation of $3 billion.
If successful, this AI-native application company, which was established just over three years ago, will become a new focus in the AI sector of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
From AI Image Community to Multi-Product Matrix
Evoken was founded in May 2023 and is an AI-native application company focused on the development of multimodal generation tools, dedicated to providing professional AI content creation tools for creative workers. The company has several businesses under its umbrella, including LiblibAI, LibTV, and Xingliu, forming a product matrix that covers AI images, design, and video creation.
Among them, LiblibAI is the company's foundational product and core cornerstone. As an AI image creation and painting platform and model sharing community, LiblibAI offers online Stable Diffusion image generation capabilities and a model material library, and has grown to become one of the largest AI material websites and creator communities in China.
According to the company's WeChat official account, the LiblibAI platform has accumulated over 30 million users, with more than 500,000 original models and over 100 million professional images and video materials. It has been disclosed that one in every three designers in China is using LiblibAI for creation. The platform has built a complete ecological chain covering AI content creation, sharing, copyright, and sales.
In March 2026, Evoken officially launched the AI video creation platform LibTV. After its launch, the platform experienced rapid growth, with daily revenue exceeding one million dollars within the first month, serving over a thousand short drama teams, film production agencies, advertising companies, and brand clients. By May, LibTV's revenue had reached more than 13 times that of its first month.
Additionally, Xingliu, one of the leading AI design agents in China, has served over ten million users.
ARR Rapidly Soars
In terms of financial performance, Evoken has shown remarkable growth. By May 2026, the group's overall revenue had increased by over 3000% year-on-year; as of May, the company's ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) exceeded $300 million, nearly tripling since the completion of the B+ round of financing.
According to Bloomberg, the performance guidance provided to investors indicates that the ARR target could reach up to $700 million by the end of 2026 The revenue scale is relatively high among AI application layer startups, but it should be noted that the high growth rate partly stems from a low base, and the paid conversion and customer retention rates of AI creation tools have not yet been validated through a complete economic cycle. The achievement of its ARR target also relies on the continuous customer acquisition and commercialization of new products like LibTV.
Founder Background and Product Strategy
According to sources such as "China Entrepreneur," Chen Mian, the founder, chairman, and CEO of YanYu Technology, was born in 1992. Before starting his own business, he worked at Mobike, Didi Chuxing, and Meituan, and later joined ByteDance as the global commercialization head for Jianying and CapCut, becoming ByteDance's youngest product level 4-1 executive at the age of 28.
In May 2023, as the wave of large models swept the globe, Chen Mian chose to leave ByteDance to pursue entrepreneurship. The company's product strategy is quite pragmatic: it does not develop general large models or foundational large models but focuses on vertical application agents, targeting professional creator groups. Chen Mian has publicly stated that when new productivity emerges, professional users typically switch faster than ordinary users. This judgment forms the logical basis for the company's focus on professional user groups.
Luxurious Capital Camp and Valuation Surge
According to Qichacha data, since its establishment, YanYu Technology has completed five rounds of equity financing. The B+ round financing completed in June 2026 amounted to approximately $300 million, with a post-investment valuation exceeding $2 billion.
The company's investors are quite luxurious, including Tencent (00700.HK), Ant Group, Sequoia China, Shunwei Capital, Giant Network (002558.SZ), and Gaorong Capital. According to public reports, this financing scale has set a record for a single round of financing in the domestic AI application layer.
In the latest round of financing, the company's valuation has risen to $3 billion. From the B+ round's $2 billion to the new round's $3 billion, the valuation has surged by 50% in just a few months. The rapid rise in valuation reflects the market's expectations for its commercialization capabilities, but attention should also be paid to whether the IPO pricing can gain recognition from secondary market investors in the current environment where valuation discrepancies between primary and secondary markets are frequent.
Concerns Behind High Growth
However, the rapid growth is not without concerns. In August 2025, YanYu Technology (formerly known as "Beijing Qidian Xingyu Technology Co., Ltd.") was sued by Shanghai Yuewen Information Technology Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Yuewen Film and Television Culture Communication Co., Ltd., both under the Yuewen Group (00772.HK), for copyright ownership and infringement disputes.
Additionally, in January and April 2025, the company was also named as an executed party twice, with a total execution amount of 80,500 RMB With the continuous improvement of the regulatory system for domestic generative AI, the enforcement of the "Interim Measures for the Management of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services" has been strengthened, and copyright compliance has become one of the core challenges faced by AI content creation platforms. For LiblibAI, which relies on a vast amount of user-generated content and model sharing, how to properly address copyright compliance issues while rapidly expanding will be a hurdle it must overcome on its path to going public.
Conclusion
Since its establishment in 2023 and the preparation for its listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, YanYu Technology has achieved rapid revenue and valuation expansion in just three years, a growth pace that is relatively rare in the AI application sector. However, the copyright compliance risks behind high growth, customer retention capabilities, and valuation support after going public are still key factors that the market needs to assess cautiously.
The commercialization path of AI creation tools has begun to take shape, but whether it can continuously validate its profit model within a compliance framework will determine whether this company can successfully pass the Hong Kong Stock Exchange hearing and gain the trust of long-term investors after going public