Der Geschäftsführer von Meitu Xiuxiu hat jede Welle aufgegriffen.

Recently, Cai Wensheng, a well - known angel investor, the founder and single largest shareholder of Meitu Inc., was appointed by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government as a member of the "Steering Group for Promoting Web3 Development".

As an active advocate in the Web3 field, Cai Wensheng recently spent HK$650 million to build the CAI Building, an "AI - Web3 Entrepreneurship Center".

Moreover, the Cai family has been actively involved in the Hong Kong property market.

In addition to Cai Wensheng's purchase of an entire commercial building in Tin Hau for HK$650 million, some members of his family have also bought large houses and land on Hong Kong Island.

Born in 1970 in Shishi, Quanzhou, Fujian, Cai Wensheng dropped out of high school and worked his way up to the forefront of China's internet industry. He is known as the "King of Speculation" or the "Grassroots Angel".

Cai Wensheng's entrepreneurial journey seems like a series of bets on business opportunities: from small street - stall businesses and cassette tape duplication in the 1980s, to the domain - name boom after the new millennium, then to investing in internet projects such as 58.com and Baofeng Yingyin, and later founding Meitu Inc. and making Meitu Xiuxiu popular across the country. He has also successively bet on the hottest industry trends such as short - video, smartphones, cryptocurrencies, Web3, and AI.

However, he has managed to ride through several cycles and hardly missed any major trends.

The Domain - Name Boom: A Bitter Start and Later Dominance

After dropping out of school at the age of 15, Cai Wensheng started street - stall businesses, sold electronic calculators, traded in clothing, duplicated cassette tapes, and engaged in real - estate business, which were the most profitable local businesses at that time.

He described selling calculators back then as "buying at 8 yuan and selling at 10 yuan", and duplicating cassette tapes of songs by Deng Lijun and Su Xiaoming to meet the needs of ordinary consumers.

Before the rise of the internet in the late 1990s, he had already accumulated the courage and savings for entrepreneurship. In 1999, he "accidentally" bought shares of Pacific Century CyberWorks at HK$5.8 per share and sold them at a high price of HK$20 per share just before the 2000 internet bubble, making his first big fortune.

This experience made him realize the magic of the online world, and he decided to enter the internet industry. In 2000, he spent 11,000 yuan to buy his first internet - enabled computer and began to study domain - name investment.

At the beginning of the 2000 internet bubble, Cai Wensheng first turned his attention to domain - name trading. That year, after seeing news about the high - price sales of tom.com and business.com, he promptly registered thousands of domain names.

However, the "big fish" missed on his first attempt: affected by the bubble, none of the thousands of registered domain names were bought. He not only got no return but also lost all the money he had earned from stock trading. This failure became his low point, but he didn't lose heart.

After some reflection, since the end of 2000, he developed a domain - name database and a domain - name registration strategy, specifically reserving domain names with investment potential. Soon, his strategy paid off: for three consecutive years, his annual income from domain - name sales exceeded one million yuan.

He sold many well - known website domain names, such as iqiyi.com (Baidu iQiyi), tudou.com (Tudou.com), chuangxin.com (Innovation Works), and baofeng.com (Baofeng Yingyin). During this period, Cai Wensheng became a veritable "Domain - Name King" with his "speed - based" domain - name registration strategy and entered the core social circle of the Zhongguancun venture - capital circle.

In 2003, he made the website navigation station 256.com very successful. Not only did its daily traffic exceed 100,000 within a week, but it also exceeded 4 million a year later.

256.com attracted IDG Capital and angel investors to invest millions of dollars. This was not only his first angel investment but also allowed him to experience the power of "venture capital" and capital up close for the first time.

After officially transforming into an angel investor in 2005, Cai Wensheng's investment philosophy has always been "fast, accurate, and ruthless": he invested 500,000 yuan in 58.com and later cashed out hundreds of millions of dollars; he invested 1.8 million yuan in Baofeng Technology and got hundreds of millions of yuan in return.

In the same year, he also invested in a number of internet start - up projects such as CMGE Technology Group Limited and Feiyu Technology, accelerating his wealth accumulation. At the end of 2007, he sold 256.com to Google for about $100 million and became a billionaire. At this time, Cai Wensheng, with his "grassroots background and keen sense", had firmly established himself in China's internet investment circle.

The Rise of Meitu Xiuxiu: Riding the Internet Wave of Female Users

With the accumulation from domain - name investment, Cai Wensheng started a new business in 2008. That year, he co - founded Meitu Inc. with his fellow - townsman Wu Xinhong in Xiamen and launched Meitu Xiuxiu, a photo - editing tool targeting female users.

At that time, there were already products such as Thunder's Light and Shadow Magic Hand and Qihoo 360's KeNiu Image in the market. As a latecomer, Meitu Xiuxiu was not well - regarded.

However, Cai Wensheng accurately captured the "love for beauty" of domestic female users. After getting millions of users, he was still not satisfied and quickly expanded the product portfolio, launching products such as the mobile beauty camera and Meitu smartphones.

In 2013, the Meitu team launched the MeituKiss series of smartphones and began to enter the social and short - video fields. In the same year, Cai Wensheng became the chairman of Meitu Xiuxiu, and Wu Xinhong became the CEO, making strategic decisions for the company.

Around 2010, Weibo became extremely popular in China, and many celebrities and internet influencers joined. Cai Wensheng had an idea and quickly removed traditional promotion channels such as forums and Tieba. Instead, he used the "community power" of Weibo to market Meitu products.

He designed many eye - catching filters and tags, which triggered spontaneous sharing among users on Weibo. Meitu Xiuxiu quickly became popular among users, once "flooding" the Moments and topping the App Store screenshot list. This move made Meitu Inc. a leader in the industry and laid the foundation for its brand's traffic.

The Highlight of Listing and Strategic Dilemmas

On December 15, 2016, Meitu Inc. was successfully listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The IPO price was HK$8.5 per share, with a total of 574 million shares issued, raising nearly HK$4.88 billion. The company's market value once approached $5 billion. As one of the main founders, Cai Wensheng held about 38.32% of the shares, equivalent to a market value of about 12 billion yuan at that time.

He happily posted on his WeChat Moments to celebrate, comparing Meitu to a "mini - version of Tencent" and becoming the new richest person in Xiamen at that time. At the beginning of the listing, Meitu's stock price soared, and its market value once approached HK$100 billion. However, it didn't last long, and problems with Meitu's performance and strategy gradually emerged.

After the listing, Meitu faced dual challenges in product development and commercialization. On the one hand, Meitu's product line was relatively single: its core tools included Meitu Xiuxiu, Beauty Camera, and Meipai, but there was a lack of new blockbusters. Due to the nature of tool software, users usually left after use, resulting in limited user stickiness and monetization ability.

In 2016, Meitu's annual revenue was 1.579 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 112.8%, but the net loss was as high as 6.261 billion yuan, a significant year - on - year expansion. More than 93% of the revenue came from smart hardware (Meitu smartphones), indicating the company's high dependence on the hardware business.

The smartphone market was highly competitive. Meitu smartphones not only had difficulty competing with giants like Samsung and Huawei, but other brands' cameras also gradually integrated beauty - enhancement functions. Meitu smartphones quickly fell out of the mainstream market. To reverse the losses, Meitu successively launched e - commerce platforms such as "Meipu" and "Meitu Customization" to try to monetize traffic, and also entered the consumer - finance field (Meitu Finance) to expand its business.

However, most of these diversification attempts achieved little success: the smartphone business was later sold to Xiaomi, Meitu's e - commerce projects had difficulty making profits, and the game and finance businesses never reached a large scale.

Meanwhile, Meitu was also trying to catch up with the social and short - video trends. In 2014, it launched the short - video social product "Meipai", and the number of users once exceeded 100 million with a daily active user count of over 10 million. However, it later faced fierce competition from platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou. Meipai was targeted at high - end users in first - and second - tier cities, making it difficult to attract a large amount of traffic from third - and fourth - tier cities. The monthly active user count of Meipai dropped from its peak to tens of millions, and it was squeezed out of the first - tier by its competitors.

Facing the successive setbacks in its diversification attempts, Meitu's stock price declined year by year after the listing, and investors also criticized the company for "not focusing on software while selling smartphones" and "making too many mistakes".

The Speculation Path: The "Gambling" in Cryptocurrencies and Web3

In 2021, with his "gambler" nature, Cai Wensheng drove Meitu Inc. to enter the cryptocurrency field in a high - profile manner. In March 2021, Meitu announced that it had spent $40 million to buy 31,000 Ether and about 379 Bitcoins (equivalent to about 260 million yuan), and boasted that it was "the first Hong Kong - listed company to buy Bitcoins" and a benchmark case of "the first company in the world to use Ether as currency reserves". This move attracted great attention from the market.

Cai Wensheng even said in his WeChat Moments, "Someone has to be the first to eat the crab", highlighting his high expectations for blockchain and Web3.

However, the "gambler" was destined to face difficulties. In the second half of 2021, the prices of Bitcoin and Ether dropped sharply, and Meitu made a large impairment provision based on fair value.

On June 30, 2021, the book values of Meitu's Bitcoin and Ether holdings dropped to about $65.2 million and $32.2 million respectively. In that quarter, the value of Bitcoin decreased by 111.9 million yuan, and the value of Ether increased by 94.9 million yuan. In total, the investment in cryptocurrencies resulted in a loss of about 17 million yuan.

Due to the failure in "cryptocurrency speculation", Meitu was labeled as "not focusing on its main business", and Chairman Cai Wensheng also faced public doubts. Investors believed that Meitu's heavy - asset expansion led to serious losses, and its frequent high - price purchases of highly volatile cryptocurrencies were extremely risky.

Sure enough, in the first half of 2022, Meitu issued a profit warning, expecting a net loss of 275 million to 345 million yuan, almost doubling year - on - year. The main reason was the impairment of cryptocurrencies. After the warning was announced, the stock price dropped sharply, and the market value evaporated significantly.

After two years of losses, Meitu had a surprising turnaround in 2023. The company's annual report showed that in 2023, the revenue was about 2.696 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 29.3%, and the net profit reached 378 million yuan, a year - on - year increase of 301.8%.

A large part of the profit came from the rebound in the value of previously "speculated" cryptocurrencies. As the prices of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin reached new highs in 2024, Meitu liquidated its cryptocurrency holdings at the end of 2024, realizing a cumulative gain of about 571 million yuan (exceeding the annual net profit).

This "bargain bought at a loss" improved the company's financial situation and showed the market that Cai Wensheng's layout in the cryptocurrency field had changed from high - risk speculation to a profitable outcome. Of course, luck also played a part: the company liquidated its holdings in time when the prices of cryptocurrencies were high, avoiding the risk of another sharp drop.

The Transformation to AIGC: From Trial - and - Error to "Winning at the Trend"

After achieving phased success in the cryptocurrency attempt, Meitu shifted its focus to artificial intelligence. In 2023, founder Wu Xinhong returned to become the CEO (Cai Wensheng resigned as the chairman), and quickly injected "AI" into Meitu.

At the beginning of his tenure, Wu Xinhong launched seven AIGC product lines, including the AI visual - creation tool WHEE, the AI voice - over video tool Start Shooting, the desktop AI video - editing tool WinkStudio, the AI commercial - design tool Meitu Design Studio 2.0, the AI digital - human generation tool DreamAvatar, the Meitu AI assistant RoboNeo, and the Meitu visual large - model MiracleVision.

These products meet the diverse needs of consumers and enterprises in visual creation, video editing, and commercial design. An institutional analyst pointed out that these new functions are targeted at the B - end design, photography, and video fields, integrating with Meitu's previously acquired beauty - industry solution business, significantly enhancing the overall synergy.

This series of AI layouts achieved remarkable results in 2023. Meitu reported that the revenue from its image and design product business increased significantly, driving the number of VIP paying members to a record high. In the first half of the year, the C - end subscription - payment penetration rate increased from 2.0% in 2022 to 2.9%, and it is expected to reach 5.3% in 2025.

MiracleVision 4.0 was launched at the end of the year. According to Wu Xinhong, it has served 1.745 million e - commerce users and generated a total of 104 million AI product images. These indicators show that the implementation of AIGC technology has effectively activated the previously sluggish user traffic and started to create new business value.

Although AI and membership - subscription businesses have become new engines for performance growth, Meitu also realizes that challenges still exist. In the future, continuous technological iteration, stable user willingness to pay, and competition from large - company AI competitors are all problems that Meitu needs to face.

However, from a broad perspective, the hundreds of millions of user base that Cai Wensheng built up in the past is gradually being monetized. Whether in the consumer market (paid design community) or the enterprise market (SaaS services), Meitu has found new growth paths.

The Investment Philosophy: Everything Based on the "Arbitrage Space"

Cai Wensheng has always been bold and daring in his investment approach. He often says that he sees "huge profit opportunities" and doesn't hesitate when he thinks there is a great chance to make money. This keen sense of trends allowed him to get "hundreds of millions" in returns from early projects such as 58.com and Baofeng Yingyin.

At the same time, he always emphasizes the importance of timely stop - loss when investment fails. After many diversification trials and errors, he joked that "in the past, we might have started projects on a whim and made many seemingly failed attempts", and pointed out that entrepreneurship requires continuous trial and error.

Notably, the criticism of his capital operations has never stopped. Cai Wensheng and his family have cashed out at high prices several times after Meitu's listing, with a cumulative cash - out of more than 1.6 billion yuan since 2016.

For example, in February 2025, he reduced his holdings by 128 million shares through his investment platform at the peak of the stock price, and Meitu's stock price declined accordingly. Investors were quite dissatisfied. His attitude towards this was the "merchant spirit" - not being attached or lingering, and selling when there is a profit.

Looking at Cai Wensheng from the perspective of