KEYTAKEAWAYS
- Strategic Evolution: YZi Labs rebranded from Binance Labs in January 2025, expanding investment focus from pure Web3 to include AI and biotechnology sectors.
- Breakthrough Technology: Renewal Bio develops Stembroid platform using patients' own cells to grow replacement organs, eliminating transplant rejection risks through regenerative medicine.
- 3. Industry Trend: Investment mirrors broader VC pattern where crypto profits fund life sciences, with Jane He appointed to lead biotech investments in March 2025.
CONTENT
YZi Labs invests in Renewal Bio, marking first biotech move. Crypto giant pivots from Web3 to regenerative medicine, signaling major strategic shift in 2025.
Yesterday’s announcement caught my attention – YZi Labs just invested in Renewal Bio, marking their first move into biotechnology. For those who’ve been following the crypto space, this is pretty significant.
We’re watching one of the industry’s biggest investment arms deliberately pivot away from pure crypto plays into something completely different: regenerative medicine.
Let me break down what’s actually happening here, because the story goes deeper than just another VC writing a check.
THE NAME GAME AND THE REBRAND
First off, YZi Labs – pronounced “easy” – is the rebranded version of what we all knew as Binance Labs. The rebrand happened in January 2025, and honestly, the name feels like it combines Yi He and CZ’s names, though that’s just my observation.
What matters more is what the rebrand represents: a complete shift in investment strategy from Web3-only to Web3 + AI + Biotech. That’s a massive expansion of scope, and it didn’t happen overnight.
HOW WE GOT HERE
Looking back at the timeline, the evolution has been pretty methodical.
Between 2018 and mid-2024, when it was still Binance Labs, the focus was straightforward – blockchain infrastructure projects. Think Polygon, LayerZero, Aptos, The Sandbox. These became household names in crypto, and they’re still going strong today. That was the golden era of pure Web3 investing.
Then something shifted around mid-2024.
That’s when Binance Labs started dipping its toes into AI, investing in projects like Sahara AI and MyShell in August 2024. At the time, they were still using the MVB incubator to filter projects before investing, but the direction was clear: they were testing waters beyond crypto. My guess? The extreme volatility and cyclical nature of crypto markets pushed them to diversify. When your entire portfolio can swing 50% in a month, you start looking for more stable long-term plays.
The formal rebrand to YZi Labs came in January 2025, making official what had been brewing for months.
But the real signal came in March when they appointed Jane He as General Partner specifically to lead biotech investments. Jane’s got a Stanford MBA and serious experience in biotech and medtech – cancer therapies, gene editing, metabolic treatments, the whole package. You don’t hire someone with that background unless you’re serious about the sector.
WHY RENEWAL BIO MATTERS
So now we get to yesterday’s news: YZi Labs investing in Renewal Bio. This isn’t just their first biotech investment; it’s a statement about where they see transformative potential. And frankly, what Renewal Bio is working on sounds like science fiction, except it’s real.
Here’s the simplest way to explain it: they want to use your own cells to grow replacement organs and tissues. The process starts with taking a small sample of your cells – say, skin cells – and reprogramming them back into stem cells. These stem cells then get cultured in a specialized lab environment that mimics embryonic development. Over weeks, these cells start forming organ structures – hearts, livers, blood cells, whatever’s needed.
The killer advantage? Because everything comes from your own cells, there’s zero rejection risk. Compare that to traditional organ transplants where patients spend their lives on immunosuppressants, hoping their body doesn’t reject the donor organ.
Now, full organ regeneration is still the long-term goal. What Renewal Bio is actually focused on right now is hematopoietic stem cells – basically, blood-forming stem cells that could treat leukemia and immune disorders. Same principle as the organ stuff, just one step earlier in the process. They’re taking patients’ cells, growing healthy stem cells, and potentially rebuilding entire blood and immune systems without needing bone marrow donors.
The technology behind this is wild. It’s called the Stembroid platform, and it’s based on breakthrough research from Professor Jacob Hanna at the Weizmann Institute. His team successfully created synthetic mouse embryos in 2022 that developed beating hearts and brain structures, with 95% similarity to natural embryos. In 2023, they did the same with human cells. We’re talking about growing embryo-like structures in artificial wombs, outside any human body.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
What strikes me about this move is how it mirrors trends we’re seeing across major VCs.
Look at a16z – they went from internet to crypto to biotech. Sequoia has separate health funds now. The pattern is clear: tech money is flowing into life sciences, and crypto-native capital is following suit.
CZ himself has talked publicly about his interest in health and longevity. When you’ve built a multi-billion dollar fortune in crypto and you’re thinking about legacy, investing in technology that could literally extend human lifespans or cure previously untreatable diseases – that’s a different level of impact than launching another DeFi protocol.
The funding Renewal Bio is getting will go toward lab expansion, building GMP-grade production facilities, and preparing for clinical trials. They’re still in preclinical stages, meaning human trials are probably years away, but that’s typical for biotech. These plays take 5-10 years to mature, which is exactly why having crypto profits to deploy makes sense. You need patient capital for this stuff.
WHAT THIS MEANS GOING FORWARD
YZi Labs now manages over $10 billion across 250+ projects in 25 countries. With this expanded mandate covering Web3, AI, and biotech, they’re positioning themselves as something more than just a crypto fund. They’re becoming a proper multi-sector technology investor that happens to have crypto DNA.
The strategic logic makes sense. Crypto markets are cyclical and volatile. AI is hot but getting crowded. Biotech offers genuine long-term value creation that’s relatively uncorrelated with crypto cycles. Plus, there’s potential synergy – imagine decentralized science (DeSci) platforms funding biotech research, or blockchain-based health data systems. The intersection points exist.
For someone like me watching from the outside, it’s actually exciting. If crypto wealth gets channeled into solving real problems like organ shortages or cancer treatment, that changes the narrative around the entire industry. Instead of being purely speculative, we’re talking about capital flowing toward genuinely transformative technology.
Will I personally benefit from Renewal Bio’s technology in my lifetime? Hard to say. Clinical trials take forever, regulatory approval is a nightmare, and there’s no guarantee the technology scales. But the fact that serious money is going into this kind of moonshot research? That’s how breakthroughs happen. Someone has to fund the crazy ideas that might just work.
All I can say is: big players making big bets on life-extending technology – yeah, I’m here for it.
Let’s see where this goes.
