CZ's YZi Labs Leads $11M Investment in AI Education Startup VideoTutor

CZ's YZi Labs Leads $11M Round in AI Education Startup VideoTutor in First AI Investment

YZi Labs has taken a significant step into the world of artificial intelligence by spearheading an $11 million seed funding round for VideoTutor, an innovative educational platform driven by AI. Founded by 20-year-old entrepreneur Kai Zhao from Silicon Valley, VideoTutor promises to revolutionize learning.

Key Takeaways:

YZi Labs led an $11 million seed investment in VideoTutor, marking its inaugural foray into AI software.
VideoTutor, established by Kai Zhao, creates personalized animated lessons from any question posed.
The funding will support research, development, and global expansion, enhancing VideoTutor's AI education capabilities.

The funding round also saw contributions from JinQiu Fund (linked to ByteDance), Baidu Ventures, Amino Capital, and BridgeOne Capital.

This investment represents YZi Labs’ first commitment to AI since the firm announced its broader focus earlier this year on X.

VideoTutor: Transforming Queries into Animated Lessons

VideoTutor describes itself as an “AI Education Agent” capable of turning any posed question into a personalized, animated lesson complete with voice guidance. The platform utilizes a large language model (LLM) combined with a Manim-based rendering pipeline, which allows for clear visual explanations of intricate subjects, including equations, diagrams, and scientific ideas.

Just ten days after its launch in May 2025, VideoTutor attracted over 20,000 users and produced more than 20,000 videos, along with receiving 1,000 API integration requests from educational institutions and learning platforms.

Dr. Jing Xiong, who serves as the AI Investment Director at YZi Labs and is a former engineer with Google Gemini, noted that VideoTutor's hybrid AI model excels beyond diffusion-based video tools, achieving “semantic precision and visual clarity” at a reduced cost.

The platform's proprietary Layout Manager and the fault-tolerant LLM loop ensure quicker and more accurate video production compared to its rivals.

VideoTutor aims to widen access to quality tutoring, addressing the reality that more than 85% of students in the U.S. are unable to afford traditional tutoring, which typically costs between $60 and $90 per hour. Its services currently cover K-12 education, SAT/ACT preparation, STEM subjects, and language learning.

The seed funding will enable advancements in research and development, facilitate global growth, and improve its AI animation technology, while also laying the groundwork for partnerships with educational institutions throughout North America and Europe.

Kai Zhao stated, “We received over ten term sheets for this round, but we selected YZi Labs as our lead investor because we align on the principle that education should be personalized, affordable, and accessible to everyone.”

YZi Labs’ $50M Investment in Better Payment Network

In addition to its work with VideoTutor, YZi Labs—previously known as Binance Labs—has also led a significant $50 million seed round for Better Payment Network (BPN). This startup is focused on creating stablecoin-based payment systems that will enhance global transaction settlements.

This funding round stands as one of the most substantial early-stage investments in the payments sector this year, reflecting YZi Labs' increased focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure for emerging markets.

BPN's innovative platform, built on BNB Chain, smartly combines DeFi automation with traditional compliance measures to enable the immediate minting and settlement of fiat-backed stablecoins.

The goal is to significantly reduce cross-border transfer times from several days down to just hours while decreasing transaction costs from 2% to 0.3%. This system removes the requirement for pre-funded liquidity, releasing trapped capital and improving overall market efficiency.

Currently, BPN supports seamless transfers between various regions, including Brazil, Nigeria, Mexico, and the Eurozone, with plans to roll out a DeFi foreign exchange market by the end of the year, allowing for up to 20 regional stablecoins.

YZi Labs has called BPN a “game-changer” in the payments landscape, indicating that its on-chain liquidity network could outshine both traditional fintech companies and the fragmented Web3 payment systems.