YZi Labs Opens Applications for the Fifth Season of EASY Residency in Thailand
Investment firm YZi Labs has opened applications for the fifth season of EASY Residency, with the second half of the program taking place in Thailand. The deadline for applications is September 21 at 23:59 (GMT-7).
The program lasts ten weeks: the first five weeks can be completed online, focusing on growth co-creation with investors, recruitment, financing, and mechanism design; the last five weeks will involve all participants living together in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with workshops, one-on-one mentoring, and community activities culminating in a demo day. Accommodation, meals, and dedicated workspaces during the stay in Thailand are fully covered, and visa assistance is provided by the organization, while airfare is self-funded. The batch size is intentionally kept small. The organization claims to have run four seasons and has supported over 100 startups cumulatively.
Selected teams can receive up to $500,000: $150,000 for 5% equity via SAFE, plus an additional $350,000 with no cap via SAFE. All accepted founders can also apply for an additional SAFE of up to $2 million with no cap from a token aggregation platform that connects with mainstream foundational models. Support includes allocations from partners like AWS and CertiK. The original "Most Valuable Builder" channel from BNB Chain has been integrated into this residency, allowing participants to receive funding, courses, technical support, and listing assistance from both YZi Labs and BNB Chain.
Priority areas include programmable capital and on-chain markets, stablecoin payment infrastructure, AI infrastructure and computing economy, trusted agents and embodied intelligence, emerging AI interfaces and consumer layers, as well as AI cross-biological and programmable sciences. YZi Labs was renamed from Binance Labs in January 2025, managing assets exceeding $10 billion, with a portfolio of over 300 projects across more than 25 countries, including Trust Wallet, CoinMarketCap, Polygon, Injective, Ethena, SafePal, etc.; over 65 portfolio companies have gone through incubation. Managing Partner Ella Zhang leads the initiative, with Changpeng Zhao and Binance co-founder Yi He joining as mentors and brand ambassadors. The fourth season held its offline segment in the Gallep Mindfulness City in Bhutan, while the first season's demo day took place at the New York Stock Exchange.
The buy-side aims to relocate early teams to low-cost residency locations, locking in equity with SAFE, while the sell-side consists of founders willing to leave their original locations for five weeks, exchanging equity for accommodation and demo day participation. Funds flow from family offices and token platform allocations into Thai workspaces, connecting with global investors on demo day. Beneficiaries include YZi Labs, which can turn the residency into a project acquisition funnel, and the cost structure that rotates locations from New York, the Bay Area, and Bhutan to Chiang Mai; the pressure is on teams that must self-fund airfare, accept a 5% priced SAFE, and compete in small batches for selection.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
YZi Labs originated from Binance Labs, initiated by Zhao in 2017, and was rebranded in 2025 as an independent investment vehicle managing the wealth of Zhao and Yi He, with Ella Zhang returning to lead. The incubation has expanded from the exchange ecosystem's "Most Valuable Builder" to three lines: Web3, AI, and biotechnology, with residency locations shifting from the New York Stock Exchange demo day, to the Computer History Museum in the Bay Area, then to Bhutan's special zone, and now to Chiang Mai. Under compliance pressures in the U.S., capital is moving founder training camps out of major jurisdictions, using all-inclusive accommodations to compress ten weeks into an executable attention monopoly.
The check structure indicates that pricing power lies with investors. $150,000 for 5% locks early companies into fixed dilution, while the $350,000 no-cap SAFE retains follow-on rights at the same table; adding a maximum of $2 million from the token platform means using a second check to bind token issuance and model interfaces into the same funnel. After the integration of the BNB Chain channel, public chain technology and listing resources are no longer offered separately. This is not a traditional accelerator's advisory week, but rather a concentration of people in a controllable physical space, with demo day used to deliver valuations.
This mirrors Y Combinator's batch residency in San Francisco, a16z Crypto's founder camp, and Network School's community living: the same approach of "locking people together for networking," just shifting the city from the Bay Area to lower-cost Asian nodes for visas and support. The industry phase sees exchange-related capital, after licensing and family office transformations, competing for early equity in AI and biotechnology intersections through residency, rather than subsidizing application layers for spot trading pairs.
This is capital concentration. The mechanism is: the original exchange investment arm managing over $10 billion consolidates incubation rights, workspace, and follow-on selection rights under the same entity, using location rotation to hedge against single regulatory zone risks, and locking in dilution with SAFE terms. Those who cover all living costs except airfare gain the highest frequency of selection rights within ten weeks; Chiang Mai here is not a tourist destination, but a container for temporarily uprooting founders from their original markets.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Wherever the accelerator moves, capital purchases the continuous attention of founders.
All-inclusive accommodation replaces fixed dilution; the true product of residency is optionality.
As regulation becomes more expensive, training camps will first migrate to nodes with cheaper visas and venues.