PR Yu is Founder & Managing Partner of Yu Galaxy, a leading solo-GP venture firm. A graduate of Peking University (0.01% acceptance) and a full-scholarship Ph.D. at CU Boulder, he began as a scientist developing new solar technologies before founding his own company to commercialize them for maximum social impact.

My long-term vision is that Yu Galaxy will redefine venture capital as a force multiplier for human progress, proving that capital allocation measured by lives saved and problems solved also yields outsize financial returns.

Today, he has invested in 100+ founders, backing early teams in healthcare, robotics, AI, and frontier infrastructure. His portfolio companies are projected to save millions of lives in coming decades and his AUM stands at $500M. Anchored by his five values – passion, service, education & growth, equity, and community – he has sponsored multiple programs in K-12 schools and universities, and donates all speaking fees to charities, advancing the causes he believes will shape the next
generation of global leaders.

To begin, your career is often described in “three 10-year chapters” as a scientist, a founder, and now an investor. How has this unique trajectory prepared you to lead Yu Galaxy with a mandate to tackle humanity’s hardest problems?

My background is the foundation of our entire firm. I’m not a career investor; I’m a founder who succeeded and failed in the trenches. My first chapter was in advanced Physical Chemistry research at institutions like the National Renewable Energy Lab. My second was spent building and scaling companies from zero to profitability.

Yu Galaxy is the convergence of all that: a fund run by a founder who applies scientific rigor and operational reality to diligence. When an entrepreneur pitches me a groundbreaking idea, I speak the language of engineering, not just cap tables, and that is our first check-size differentiator.

Yu Galaxy operates with one of America’s largest Solo GP-led models, now surpassing $500M AUM. What is the fundamental strategic advantage of this structure over a traditional multi-partner firm?

We proved that conviction can move faster than consensus. The Solo GP model is not a trend for us; it’s a commitment to efficiency and service. As the sole decision-maker, I am highly accessible and can move with unmatched agility. While most Solo GPs manage less than $10 million, our scale is the key: it allows us to lead rounds with checks from a few million to more than ten million dollars. This gives us the ability to provide the maximum level of help to our founders—the capital and the support they need—without sacrificing the quick decision-making of a lean firm.

Your thesis focuses on the inseparability of impact and profit. For our enterprise readers, why are companies that solve big social challenges inherently better financial investments?

Our thesis is simple, but powerful: Impact and profit are not in conflict; they are two sides of one coin. When you solve a need as foundational as, say, heart disease or securing global infrastructure, the market demand is inelastic, and the resulting financial return is outsized and resilient.

We don’t think in terms of fleeting trends; we look for companies that are solving massive, intractable problems that will fundamentally change an industry. This clarity of mission attracts the highest caliber of founders and capital.

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In the broader market, where do you see the most significant capital gap, and how does your firm fill it?

The gap is not just a lack of capital; it’s a lack of understanding – both on the technical depth and the complexity of building a category-defining company from scratch. The high-impact companies we fund are often “too revolutionary” and “too complex” for most traditional investors to understand in the early stages. They are afraid of what they don’t know, so they wait for traction.

Our scientific and entrepreneurial background allows us to see through the complexity and understand that all the founders need is time, capital, and a partner who not only believes in them but also has the experience and resources to help them thrive from the beginning. When a public market analyst questioned why we invested in Leo Cancer Care, I told her that is precisely the purpose of our fund—to be ready to support and close that huge gap.

Your portfolio spans deep-tech, healthcare, defense, and AI. Is there an intentional focus, or do you seek to remain open to new industry sectors?

We are intentionally generalists in our approach. I function like an entrepreneur, and I want to be open so that when founders in different industries come to us with a “burning impact” they want to solve, we are ready to respond. We don’t want to be set in a box and say, ‘We don’t understand what

you’re talking about.’ We invest in the vision and the technical DNA of the entrepreneur, regardless of the vertical, as long as the potential social impact is massive.

Can you share an example of a transformative, quiet use case where a Yu Galaxy portfolio company is fundamentally changing how its industry runs?

InsightFinder is a great example of quiet, critical impact. They are an AI infrastructure company, not built on Large Language Models. I tell people to think of them as OpenAI, but with the machine data. They use proprietary AI to monitor and maintain complex IT architectures.

Their solution can predict IT system failure before it happens, with enough lead time to prevent downtime entirely. They also built tools to monitor whether an AI model has “drifted” after absorbing new data. For enterprise customers, this translates directly to millions saved and operational integrity secured. These tools have already been deployed in many Fortune 500 companies.

You mentioned closing a deal for Capstan Medical in a matter of weeks and wiring funds to Inquis Medical on a handshake. How critical is that speed and decisiveness to your investment strategy?

That speed is our superpower; it demonstrates our conviction. For Capstan Medical, we went from the first conversation to wiring millions in a few weeks. For Inquis Medical, since I’ve invested in the founders’ previous company with a successful exit and gotten to know them very well, I told them that for their next company, all I needed was their bank account information.

We often make decisions on the phone for our existing companies because we are intimately familiar with their situations and know how to serve them. This rapid decision-making eliminates uncertainty, which is the most valuable currency for a founder in a competitive environment.

Finally, looking ahead, what should the market expect from Yu Galaxy over the next 12-18 months, and what is your ultimate long-term vision?

Over the next 18 months, we will continue the strategic deployment of Fund III, doubling down on companies that are tackling critical global challenges. We’ll be celebrating many more stories, like the recent one where a portfolio company’s robotic system saved its first life in New Zealand.

Our goal is to see our companies collectively touch a billion or more lives in the coming years. My long-term vision is that Yu Galaxy will redefine venture capital as a force multiplier for human progress, proving that capital allocation measured by lives saved and problems solved also yields outsize financial returns.

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