2021.07.08 CoStone Capital Views:
WeRide, the global leading L4 autonomous driving company closed its $310Mn series C funding from IDG, CoStone Capital etc. In May 2021, reported a post-money valuation of $3.3Bn.
WeRide got its road-testing licenses from Guangzhou Government and Californica DMV in 2020 and 2021, making this infant company the first autonomous vehicle player who are authorized to deploy road testing in both China and U.S.
WeRide is one of CoStone Capital’s TMT portfolio company. CoStone Capital discovered WeRide in 2020, when the valuation of WeRide was 9 billion dollars. Lin Ling, CoStone Capital’s partner and chairman, believes that the management expertise and innovation across the young team would bring more possibilities to WeRide.
“Being as the ultimate solution of transportation, autonomous cars have a promising trend in future development. With the rapid growth of technology and huge market space, majority of enterprises around the world has entered into the breakthrough stage in autonomous driving. WeRide is the leading autopilot company in China, formed by a team with sophisticated experience in automotive driving and management from both China and the United States. Equipped with comprehensive ability in technical research and development, WeRide is the pioneering company in the fields of road test and commercialized progress. CoStone believe there is a bright future in WeRide.”
According to Japanese automobile COO, Ashwani Gupta’s words, “China is at the cutting-edge of defining future transportation. We are glad to work with WeRide, providing more innovative technology and services for China.”
Up to recent days, WeRide constantly published autopilot road test videos, continuing to display their development of automotive technology. The road tests covered primary and secondary distributor roads, expressway, city tunnel, toll station. The multi-angle videos presented WeRide’s proficient technical strength in autopilot.
For the full transcript, please refer to https://stonevc.com/InformationCentre/info.aspx?itemid=1287
Rewriting by Kong Xiaomei; Editing by Du Zhixin and Li Yunzhen.
Over 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