China’s Answer to Vibe Coding

A new front has opened in the AI race between the U.S. and China. A six-month old Chinese startup has jumped into the market for coding assistants aimed at amateurs, hoping to make a global splash the way Chinese firms DeepSeek and Manus did in open-source models and AI that controls web browsers, respectively.

YouWare, created by a 20-person team based in Shenzhen, has garnered tens of thousands of daily active users—including people who are paying a subscription and those who are not—since its launch in early March, according to YouWare founder Leon Ming, who once worked in product development at ByteDance. Most of the users are in the U.S., Japan and South Korea. While it was initially available in China, Ming withdrew YouWare from China to avoid potentially running afoul of censorship in China.

The company raised $20 million in two rounds of funding in just a month, valuing it at $80 million as of November last year. Its backers include some of China’s top VC firms—such as 5Y Capital and ZhenFund—and private equity powerhouse HillHouse.

Ming says he aims to democratize coding the way smartphones did photography and videography, and eventually spawn a new generation of creators and communities for them.