By investing in Moore Threads, Muxi Technology, and LandSpace, Zhengzhou has achieved great success.
When it comes to Henan enterprises, people often think of Shuanghui and Muyuan first. Immediately afterwards, they might think of Pop Mart, Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, and Fat Donglai, which have remained popular in recent years.
Few people know that Henan is not only a major agricultural and populous province but also a significant manufacturing hub in China. It has a well - rounded modern industrial system with 41 major industrial categories and 197 intermediate industrial categories. In the manufacturing landscape of Henan, Zhengzhou plays a major role as the carrier.
Not to mention the past, a recent case in point is Hyper - Fusion, a unicorn in the computing power field, which has announced its plan to go public.
Meanwhile, I've noticed that the news of a hard - tech fund in Zhengzhou investing in Moore Threads, Muxi Semiconductor Co., Ltd., and Landspace Technology has been spreading in the market. According to the announcements of listed companies such as Shenyuan Environmental Protection and Ruifeng New Materials, this fund is the Zhongyuan Qianhai Fund, a hard - tech fund funded by Zhengzhou state - owned assets and managed by Qianhai Ark.
Publicly available information shows that although the proportion of this fund in these three star projects is not high, being able to invest in these major projects at the same time is an affirmation of Zhengzhou and even Henan's hard - tech investment direction. Of course, some analysts say that this is a successful practice of combining Shenzhen's experience with Henan's endowments, highlighting the role of Qianhai Ark.
So, how did the Zhongyuan Qianhai Fund capture these three projects? What was the background at that time? What kind of investment strategy does Zhengzhou, which is quietly deploying in the hard - tech field, follow?
The scale of the two - phase funds is nearly 10 billion
According to data from CVSource, the Zhongyuan Qianhai Fund has launched two phases in Zhengzhou, with a five - year interval between their establishments.
The Zhongyuan Qianhai Fund, established in 2018, has a registered capital of 5.64 billion yuan. It focuses on hard - tech fields such as semiconductors, commercial aerospace, and high - end manufacturing, adopting a dual model of a mother fund and direct investment.
In terms of the LP structure, the largest shareholder is Beijing CMCC Hechuang Equity Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership), which contributed 1 billion yuan, but its first contribution was made in August 2022. Ruifeng New Materials also entered the fund at the same time as CMCC Hechuang, contributing 90 million yuan.
The second - largest shareholder of the fund is CITIC Prudential Life Insurance Co., Ltd., which invested 600 million yuan in the fund in 2021. Apart from state - owned enterprises and insurance funds, most LPs with a relatively high proportion of capital are from Henan state - owned assets backgrounds, such as Henan Agricultural Investment Group, Henan State - owned Assets Holding and Operation Group, and Zhengzhou Guochuang Industrial Investment.
The remaining small share was subscribed by industrial investors such as Shenyuan Environmental Protection, Qifeng New Materials, Bairun Industry, Anlinshan Assets, and Guangshunsheng Investment.
As a hard - tech fund, the capital of Zhongyuan Qianhai mainly flows into fields such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, informatization, healthcare, and new energy. As of 2024, it has made 130 investments in total, with 2021 being the peak year of investment in terms of both amount and frequency.
In terms of exits, most of them are through IPOs. The year 2025 had the most exit projects, including Moore and Muxi, indicating that the first phase of Zhongyuan Qianhai is also entering the harvest period.
An interesting statistic is that the project with the highest return rate in this fund is Boying Special Welding, a welding technology R & D company in the traditional manufacturing field. In 2019, Zhongyuan Qianhai invested 75 million yuan in it. Four years later, Boying Special Welding was successfully listed on the A - share market, generating a return of over 7 times for the fund.
The achievements of the first - phase fund provided a prerequisite for the launch of the second - phase Zhongyuan Qianhai Fund in Zhengzhou.
In 2023, the second - phase Zhongyuan Qianhai Fund with a scale of over 4 billion yuan was officially announced. This fund is entirely participated in by Henan capital, including 10 institutions such as the Zhengzhou National Central City Industrial Development Fund, the Zhengzhou Zhongyuan Science City Industrial Guidance Fund, the Henan Agricultural Development Emerging Industry Investment Fund, the Nanyang Investment Group, the Hebi Equity Investment Mother Fund, and the Puyang Financial Holding Co., Ltd.
Officially, it is said that the fund mainly invests in emerging industries such as new - type displays and intelligent terminals, biomedicine, energy conservation and environmental protection, new energy and connected vehicles, artificial intelligence, network security, new materials, intelligent equipment, 5G technology, high - precision aluminum, and special equipment manufacturing. At the same time, it focuses on unlisted growth - oriented enterprises, high - tech enterprises, and other high - quality small and medium - sized enterprises, with the aim of cultivating a number of star science and technology innovation brand projects and influential listed companies.
Judging from the investment actions, the second - phase fund has not entered the stage of large - scale investment, and only a single - digit number of projects have been publicly announced.
Investing during the period of strong consensus
After clarifying the basic information of these funds, let's see how the Zhongyuan Qianhai Fund bet on these three star projects: Moore Threads, Muxi Semiconductor, and Landspace Technology.
First, in terms of the entry time, as mentioned above, 2021 was a period when Zhongyuan Qianhai made frequent investments. Its investments in Moore Threads and Muxi Semiconductor were also made in this year. In addition to these two enterprises, Zhongyuan Qianhai also invested in seven semiconductor projects in 2021, including ESW Computing, Yunhe Zhinet, Guangzhou Optocean Semiconductor, and Yixinyuan Semiconductor.
This is in line with the background at that time. 2021 was a golden year for semiconductor investment. Industry data shows that in 2021, there were 686 financing events in the semiconductor field, a year - on - year increase of about 45% compared with 2020. The financing amount reached 2.4 times that of 2020, accounting for more than one - third of the total hard - tech investment in China in that year.
As two popular projects in the domestic GPU track, in June 2021, Muxi Semiconductor completed a nearly 1 - billion - yuan Series A financing, and Zhongyuan Qianhai was one of the many institutions that entered this round. In November of the same year, it participated in the largest financing round of Moore Threads at that time, a 2 - billion - yuan Series A financing. Both of these financing rounds witnessed a historic large - scale investment boom.
As a result, the share that Zhongyuan Qianhai could obtain was not much. According to the prospectus, the fund's share in these two projects was about 0.2%. Another data from CVSource shows that these two projects brought a return rate of over 200% to Zhongyuan Qianhai.
Although the shareholding ratio is low and the return multiple is not extremely high, such a result is lucky for those who entered during the period of high valuations and high capital density. After all, the significance of star projects is not limited to the financial return. Getting the entry qualification at that time and successfully accompanying the companies to the listing stage has already left most institutions behind.
Next, let's look at Landspace Technology. Zhongyuan Qianhai became an investor in Landspace through two methods: buying old shares and capital increase and share expansion.
According to Landspace's prospectus, at the end of April 2024, Zhongyuan Qianhai acquired 97,647 shares and 86,028 shares of Landspace from Haihe Yunjian and Gongqingcheng Daoying at prices of 6,395,878.5 yuan and 5,634,834 yuan respectively. At the same time, Zhongyuan Qianhai also increased its capital in Landspace by 47,969,238.82 yuan in cash, subscribing for 596,471 shares.
In this way, before the IPO issuance, Zhongyuan Qianhai held 0.32% of the shares in Landspace Technology.
It should be noted that Landspace Technology is not Zhongyuan Qianhai's only layout in the commercial aerospace field. It first invested in a satellite company, Weilian Xingzhi, in November 2022. Then, in 2023, it made investments in a component manufacturer, Qinghang Aerospace, and a small satellite company, Magic Cube Satellites.
It is speculated that the decision to invest in Landspace in 2024 was inspired by these manufacturers. From the perspective of the industrial chain, Zhongyuan Qianhai had already acquired satellite and component manufacturers, and adding a whole - rocket manufacturer could be regarded as completing the preliminary layout of the entire industrial chain. However, what the fund did not expect might be the rapid rise in the popularity of commercial aerospace and the early arrival of Landspace's IPO.
Although it is currently impossible to judge the return rate that Landspace will bring to Zhongyuan Qianhai, from the perspective of capital efficiency alone, being able to exit within two years of investment is by no means a losing deal.
Zhengzhou is replicating Hefei
Finally, let's turn back to Zhengzhou.
In recent years, Zhengzhou has been very active in the venture capital field, and the Zhongyuan Qianhai Fund is just an example. Many people familiar with Zhengzhou's investment promotion know that its strategy is similar to that of Hefei in the past, that is, by introducing leading projects to attract upstream and downstream supporting manufacturers to settle, thus driving the development of the entire industry.
Take the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone as an example. Its 14th Five - Year Development Plan mentions strengthening the leading role of leading enterprises in innovation. It actively promotes leading enterprises such as Foxconn, BYD, and Hyper - Fusion to set up R & D centers in the airport economy zone, focuses on key areas of advanced manufacturing, conducts research on key core technologies, and continuously improves the core competitiveness of the industry.
Before this, through the projects of Shanghai Hejing and Hyper - Fusion, the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone had successfully built a 100 - billion - yuan industrial cluster.
In 2016, Shanghai Hejing introduced Xinggang Rongchuang Fund, an industrial guidance fund under the Henan Airport Economic Zone Investment Group, through capital increase and share expansion. The fund invested 700 million yuan in Shanghai Hejing and became its second - largest shareholder, holding a 29.86% stake.
At that time, the entire 700 - million - yuan financing was used for the construction of the Zhengzhou Hejing production base. In 2017, an 8 - inch polished wafer production line was newly built in the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone with Zhengzhou Hejing as the platform. After several years of capacity ramping up, Zhengzhou Hejing has become an important silicon wafer production base in China.
In February 2024, Shanghai Hejing was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board. As of January 27 this year, the market value of Shanghai Hejing was nearly 17 billion yuan. On paper, Xinggang Rongchuang Fund had a floating profit of over 4 billion yuan.
For local state - owned assets, financial return is just an added bonus. More importantly, this investment has leveraged a brand - new strategic emerging industry for Zhengzhou.
On the one hand, the Zhengzhou production base has filled the gap in the high - end semiconductor silicon material field in Henan Province. On the other hand, as an upstream core material supplier, Shanghai Hejing has promoted the agglomeration of the electronic information industrial chain, forming a complete ecological chain of "silicon materials - chip manufacturing - intelligent terminals".
The introduction of Shanghai Hejing has also made the airport economy zone taste the benefits of the professional operation of a market - oriented fund. So in 2021, Zhengzhou decisively introduced Hyper - Fusion, which was spun off from Huawei. A relevant person in charge of the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone Management Committee once said: "We should benchmark against international standards, Pudong, and Shenzhen. As long as the innovation measures are beneficial to the development of the airport economy zone, to starting businesses, and to project construction, we should boldly try and explore."
In November 2021, Hyper - Fusion was officially established in Henan. Its controlling shareholder is Henan Chaojuneng Technology Co., Ltd., holding a 31.38% stake. On December 18, in just 55 days, the first server from the Zhengzhou production line rolled off the production line, achieving large - scale mass production.
After that, the story of Hyper - Fusion somewhat replicated that of Shanghai Hejing. With the establishment of Hyper - Fusion, a number of its upstream and downstream partners have successively settled in Henan. According to the official statement, out of the 101 - enterprise list, 24 were contacted, and a total of 11 industrial chain enterprises were introduced to Henan, truly forming a snowball effect of "investing in one, attracting a series, and settling a cluster".
In the first half of 2025, the added value of the advanced computing industrial chain represented by Hyper - Fusion increased by 58.6% year - on - year, ranking first among the 28 key industrial chains in Henan. This chain covers key components from the whole machine to chips, motherboards, memory, and hard drives.
At the beginning of 2026, the official website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission updated a filing information, which means that Hyper - Fusion has officially launched the A - share listing guidance and is aiming for an IPO. This super - unicorn project will undoubtedly bring another capital feast to Zhengzhou and Henan.
As a loyal follower of the Hefei model, Zhengzhou has started to enter the game of top - level hard - tech projects in the country. However, Zhengzhou's hard - tech layout is not a complete copy. Based on its own industrial heritage, state - owned asset strength, and geographical advantages, it is finding its own path. The cases of Shanghai Hejing and Hyper - Fusion are both proof and the beginning, and Zhengzhou's hard - tech map is still expanding. The future is promising.
This article is from the WeChat official account "China Venture Capital", author: Zhang Xue, published by 36Kr with authorization.