On June 1, the twentieth CoStone Master Forum themed with "Economic Transformation & Business Revolution" kicked off at the world's highest concert hall the Sky Concert Hall, located at the T7 building of One Shenzhen Bay in Shenzhen. Dr. Jia Kang and six other speakers from the academic and business circles were invited to share their views on business revolution.
READ
On May 17th, the 7th Chinese Venture Capital Summit was held by Securities Times in Shenzhen.
“The traitorous spirit and inclusive industries make Shenzhen, an immigrant city, the most to Silicon Valley-like in the world, where lies the future of China’s entrepreneurship.”
READ
On March 5th, Nio (NIO.NYSE), the leader of China’s new energy vehicle (NEV) start-ups, announced a net loss of $9.3B in its annual report. The report also predicted far weaker growth of sales in the future than had been expected, and its factory-building plans are put on ice. Later, its shares plunged 31% amid a 7-day losing streak and its market value evaporated by $4.21B. The number of NEV start-ups have long exceeded 100, while most of them are going to face an existential crisis in 2019. NEV as well as autonomous driving is absolutely a promising direction for investments. But there are no NEV firms worth of an investment so far.
READ
CoStone Capital has always been socially conscious and actively involved in the country's poverty alleviation strategy. CoStone Capital donated $0.3Mn to support the poverty alleviation project of “Photovoltaic Farm” in Fenxi, Shanxi Province in 2018, as an active response to the call of Asset Management Association of China (AMAC) . This poverty reduction project was expected to generate more than ¥2.8Mn of income each year and help about 800 households to get rid of poverty.
The roadshows for Shenzhen Angel FoFs signing and Baby Fund investment project was held in Wuzhou Hotel on the afternoon of November 16. Zhang Wei, chairman of CoStone Capital, attended the signing ceremony.
READ
On November 20, 2018, the SSE Equity Investment Forum and the 7th "Financial Assets" award ceremony hosted by Shanghai Securities. CoStone Capital won the "Outstanding Investment Institution Award".
READ
In recent years, government guide funds have gradually become a strong force in the PE market. By the end of 2017, the total target size of domestic government guide funds had reached about ¥10 trillion, and about ¥3.5 trillion had been allocated.
READOver the past year, the bull market returned, with technology leading the way.
As I said back in October 2024, the rally that began on September 24 was not merely a rebound, but a reversal. Since then, China's capital markets have undergone a broad revaluation, moving from undervaluation toward fair value.
The Shanghai Composite Index reached its highest level in a decade. The "Yi-Zhong-Tian" trio—Eoptolink, Zhongji Innolight and TFC Communication, three prominent Chinese optical communications stocks—saw their share prices multiply severalfold in a single year. Cambricon's market capitalization briefly exceeded RMB 600 billion. Elsewhere in the technology sector, triple-digit price-to-earnings ratios and valuations exceeding RMB 10 billion became commonplace.
Some investors were greedy; others, fearful. Still others asked me: Are technology stocks in a valuation bubble?
My answer is that what we are witnessing is the hunger and anxiety of an era, reflected in the capital markets. Once you understand this, the current fervor for technology investing is no longer difficult to explain.
Investment has nothing to do with macroeconomics, but everything to do with geopolitics.
China-US relations will shape the investment landscape for decades to come. Geopolitics has played a major role in shaping the hunger and anxiety of our times, fundamentally reshaping the way we invest.
What, then, lies at the heart of China's hunger and anxiety?
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is already underway, yet China has not fully overcome the technological shortcomings left by the Third. There is no time to lose.
This is why some people wonder: Why do Chinese computing chip companies command such high valuations when their technologies still lag so far behind NVIDIA's? Why does NVIDIA trade at just 50 times earnings, while a company hailed as "China's answer to NVIDIA" commands a multiple of 300?
To me, this gets the logic exactly backward.
It is precisely because these companies cannot catch up with NVIDIA in the near term that they command a higher strategic premium. The wider the technological gap, the greater the strategic value.
The further something lies beyond our reach, the stronger our hunger. The harder it is to catch up, the deeper our anxiety. If China were to achieve a complete breakthrough in computing chips one day, valuations might actually come down.
Where can one find China's most spectacular natural landscapes?
Much of the answer, I believe, lies in and around the Hengduan Mountains: the Meili Snow Mountains, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, Mount Gongga, Mount Siguniang, Jiuzhaigou, and many others. Vast differences in elevation and deep fault lines have given rise to landscapes of extraordinary grandeur.
Hard-tech investing follows a similar logic.
Technological gaps, discontinuities in capabilities, and missing links in industrial systems: a leap in difficulty brings a leap in valuation, and a successful breakthrough can, in turn, bring a leap in returns.
This logic extends well beyond computing chips. It is equally evident in memory semiconductors, commercial spaceflight, and other sectors where China still faces substantial technological gaps with other countries.
It was precisely this conviction that led CoStone Capital, starting in 2016, to decisively focus its investments on three areas: hard tech, emerging industries, and life sciences and healthcare. In this context, "hard tech" refers specifically to important industries in which China faces a technological gap with the United States.
Thanks to this forward-looking strategy, CoStone Capital established an early presence across the full value chains of key sectors, including semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and robotics.
Looking ahead, the frontiers of technological progress and industrial upgrading are boundless. Nor can the gaps in hard technology be closed overnight. The twin windows of opportunity presented by technological innovation and the development of homegrown alternatives to foreign technologies have only just begun to open.
The road ahead is long, but the future holds immense promise.
As an investment firm, CoStone Capital will continue to invest where the hunger and anxiety of each era run deepest, move forward with the tensions that shape our times, and extend our reach toward the most challenging—and most important—frontiers.
Spring 2026
