On November 19, an auction of the public offering fund management institution for Anhui Industry Development Fund was held in Hefei. Anhui Industrial Upgrading Fund with a total scale of ¥10Bn won by CoStone Capital.
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From November 26 to 27, 2015, the “Investment Annual Meeting of China Venture” was held in Beijing, at which the "2015 Industry List" was released. Among them, CoStone Capital was named the "2015 TOP10 Healthcare VC Investors" by virtue of its excellent performance in the healthcare sector.
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The sixth CoStone Mater Forum kicked off at Yalong Bay in Hainan on February 11, 2015. The theme of the Forum was "Platform Strategy & Internet Thinking".
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On May 31, 2014, the second CoStone Master Forum opened in Yixing, Jiangsu. The Dragon Boat Festival and charming spring added to the lectures. Prof. Bao Zheng at Renmin University of China (RUC) delivered lectures on Organization & Management. Prof. Bao is the first person who interpreted Peter Drucker in China and is a management master. He summarized the theories and practice of management from Adam Smith to Drucker and introduced some of his classic cases of company management consulting over the past 20 years.
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The third CoStone Master Forum was co-hosted by CoStone Capital and Sunriver, a famous tourist destination builder, in Hefei, Anhui. Professor Shi Wei, a marketing expert, was invited to lecture on Marketing in A New Era.
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On May 15, 2014, the first CoStone Master Forum was held in Shenzhen. With the theme of "Insights on Huawei", the forum invited Prof.Peng Jianfeng, Prof. Bao Zheng and Prof. Shi Wei at Renmin University of China and Mr. Zhang Jianguo to give a two-day lecture on Huawei's enterprise management. Over 100 guests from China's business and academic cycles were present.
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Zhang Wei believes that in order to promote the future structural transformation of manufacturing enterprises, the definition of the industry should be broadened. In the past, manufacturing industry was regarded as a simple process of turning raw materials into products, while the truly advanced manufacturing industry is a complex process of combining various production factors into a solution to continuously solve customer needs.
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CoStone Capital is a boutique Chinese private equity firm founded in 2001. During the past 11 years, more than 50 firms were invested by the CoStone Capital, including Sunward Intelligent Equipment (002097. SZ), Hubei Huitian New Materials (300041. SZ), New Hope Liuhe (000876. SZ). These investments brought 30 to 50 folds of returns, which enabled the firm to be outstanding in return ranking in the industry up to now. In an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald (21 CBH), the chairman of CoStone, Wei Zhang, states that the firm is benefited from its concentrated scale and value-focused investment route, this investment strategy raises less fundraising pressure. However, the concentration also poses challenges to the team’s risk management and post-investment management.
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In early 2013, Zhang Wei, chairman of CoStone Capital, made a donation to Guangdong Mingyi Medical Charity Foundation on behalf of the company. At the donation ceremony, He Jianxing, executive director of the foundation and president of the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical College, introduced that the philanthropic areas include rewarding doctors with outstanding contributions, setting up medical scholarships, sponsoring medical trips in poor areas, and supporting medical research projects.
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CoStone Annual Meeting 2013 took placeatthe Interlaken OCT Hotel,Shenzhen, Guangdong on March 30 and 31,2013.
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
