Juul inventor’s Myst lands funding as institutional investors turn to China’s e-cigs
Over the past several years, institutional investors had largely shied away from China’s e-cigarette makers, an industry that was teeming with shoddy workshops and lacked regulatory oversight. But investors’ attitude is changing as China sets in motion its strictest ever regulation on electronic cigarettes.
Myst Labs, a Chinese e-cigarette maker co-founded in 2019 by Chenyue Xing, a chemist who was part of the team at Juul that invented nicotine salts, a key ingredient in vaping, recently raised “tens of thousands of dollars” from a Series B funding round. The financing was led by its existing investor, IMO Ventures. Thomas Yao, CEO and another co-founder of Myst, is a founding partner of IMO Ventures.