YZi Labs: Placing Bold Bets on Tomorrow’s Breakthroughs Across AI, DeSci & Web3

The venture arm formerly known as Binance Labs is charting its own course — backing ambitious founders who refuse to wait for the future to arrive on its own.

Venture capital in crypto has a short memory. One cycle, decentralized finance is everything. The next, it’s NFTs. Then memecoins steal the spotlight before everyone pivots to real-world assets. For Ella Zhang, head of YZi Labs, this pattern of chasing narratives is exactly the wrong approach.

Speaking at Consensus Hong Kong 2026, Zhang laid out a philosophy that sounds deceptively simple: invest in what hasn’t happened yet, and back the people crazy enough to make it happen.

Rebranding with Purpose

YZi Labs — the firm that previously operated under the Binance Labs banner — has quietly been carving a broader identity for itself. The rebrand wasn’t cosmetic. It reflects an expansion in scope that now stretches well beyond crypto and Web3, reaching into artificial intelligence and biotechnology.

The shift makes strategic sense. Crypto markets are notoriously cyclical. AI, by contrast, is on a steep adoption curve with no sign of plateauing. Biotech operates on its own timeline entirely, measured in clinical trial phases and regulatory approvals rather than token launch schedules. Spreading conviction across all three allows YZi to stay productive regardless of which sector is having its moment.

Conviction Over Capital Deployment

One of Zhang’s more striking comments at the event was about discipline. “We’re not obligated to deploy all the capital we have,” she told the audience, pushing back against the common VC impulse to write checks simply because the fund exists.

At YZi, the sequence is deliberate: conviction first, capital second. The firm wants to enter early — ideally as one of the first institutional backers — but doesn’t vanish after the seed round. Portfolio companies receive continued support through follow-on rounds, strategic mentorship, and access to a network that few crypto-native firms can match.

That network includes the BNB Chain ecosystem, which Zhang described as a ready-made distribution layer. With thousands of active protocols and a user base numbering in the hundreds of millions, BNB Chain gives YZi’s portfolio companies something that most startups struggle to find on their own: immediate access to real users at scale.

Filtering Signal from Noise

Zhang was blunt about how the firm evaluates opportunities. Forget the hype. Forget the narrative. The questions that matter are far more grounded:

• Does genuine user demand exist, or is the demand imaginary?
• What specific pain point is being addressed?
• How does the product reach its audience?
• Are there early, tangible signals that the problem actually matters to real people?

This founder-centric, product-first approach stands in contrast to how much of the crypto venture world operates, where token economics and market timing often receive more attention than whether anyone actually needs the product.

Stablecoins as the Gateway Drug

When it comes to near-term product trends, Zhang is particularly bullish on stablecoins. She views them as the first genuinely mass-market crypto application that goes beyond speculative trading.

The argument holds weight. Stablecoins have found real-world traction in remittances, freelancer payments, and cross-border commerce — use cases where traditional banking infrastructure remains slow, expensive, or inaccessible. Compliance frameworks are catching up too, with regulators worldwide beginning to provide clearer guidance on how stablecoins should be governed.

Still, Zhang isn’t declaring victory prematurely. Several infrastructure gaps need to be addressed before stablecoins reach their full potential: custody solutions need to mature, exchange rails must improve, and on-chain foreign exchange mechanisms are still in their early stages. The plumbing works, but it needs to be industrial-grade before mainstream adoption can truly accelerate.

Embracing Failure as a Feature

Perhaps the most refreshing part of Zhang’s public remarks was her stance on founder failure. In an industry that often glorifies overnight success while quietly shunning those who stumble, Zhang took the opposite position: YZi actively welcomes founders who have failed before.

“We’re very, very open for the founders to fail and welcome them to come back,” she said.

This isn’t just sentiment. It reflects a practical understanding that building at the frontier — whether in decentralized systems, machine learning, or biological engineering — carries inherent risk. The founders who fail, learn, and return often build the most resilient companies the second time around. Some of the biggest names in tech followed exactly this path.

Looking Ahead

YZi Labs sits at an interesting crossroads. On one hand, its Binance heritage gives it unmatched distribution in the Web3 world. On the other, its expanded mandate into AI and biotech means it’s competing with — and collaborating alongside — an entirely different class of investors.

The bet is that the boundaries between these sectors will continue to blur. Decentralized compute networks powering AI training. Tokenized biotech IP creating new funding models for drug discovery. On-chain data infrastructure enabling transparent clinical trials. These aren’t science fiction scenarios — they’re projects already in early development across the startup landscape.

Whether YZi’s thesis plays out depends on the same thing it always does: the quality of the founders they back, and whether the problems those founders tackle are real enough to survive the hype cycle.

If Zhang’s track record is any indication, the odds are decent.

This article provides an analysis of recent statements made by YZi Labs leadership at Consensus Hong Kong 2026. It does not constitute investment advice.