The 2025 Investment Industry 100 People Conference concluded in Sanya, with industry experts gathering to ride the waves in the venture capital arena.
On February 28th, the 2025 Investment 100 People Conference, hosted by Zero2IPO Ventures (01945.HK) and Investment Community, was successfully held in Sanya. In the early spring, more than a hundred representatives of VC/PE gathered for the annual gathering of the venture capital and private equity industry, assembling the leading forces of the industry, stimulating new thoughts in the venture capital in the coconut forest and sea breeze, and anchoring the direction of the cycle.
In the past year, the Chinese equity investment market has shown initial signs of recovery with frequent highlights. The iterative AI technology and the rise of new tech tycoons have triggered a new round of "gold rush" craze; affected by policies, industry consolidation and the international environment and other factors, the M&A market has ushered in structural development opportunities; the National Social Security Fund, insurance companies, and financial institutions are also actively investing under the policy guidance. Against this background, this conference will work with venture capital experts to analyze investment trends and discuss industry opportunities.
Passion Peak Dialogue Kicks Off
The conference officially began with the speech of Ni Zhengdong, the founder and chairman of Zero2IPO Group and the CEO of Zero2IPO Ventures. He said: "At this moment, the recovery atmosphere in the Chinese primary market is becoming more and more obvious. In terms of investment, everyone is becoming active; in terms of fundraising, many of our venture capitalists participated in the symposium, and we deeply know that the leadership is thinking of new policies to solve the fundraising problem; in terms of exits, there will be improvements in 2025, IPOs will not continue to slow down, and there will be a small upsurge in the Hong Kong stock market. No matter how the market changes, GPs must maintain their determination, adapt to various changes, be independent and professional, make good judgments and make good investments."
Subsequently, in the "Investment Community Says" session, Kuang Ziping, the founding managing partner of Qiming Venture Partners, shared his views on the venture capital trend in 2025: "First, artificial intelligence is the sub-sector with the largest proportion in our technology field. We consider how to invest from the perspective of the entire ecosystem of artificial intelligence. Second, China's engineering design product capabilities radiate globally, including the C-end products that everyone is familiar with, and the international consumption proportion is very high. Now many To B equipment in China is also becoming more and more internationally competitive." Qu Liefeng, the founding partner of Lianxin Capital, said: "This generation of artificial intelligence represented by the large model still has many opportunities to be deeply integrated with specific industries. For example, the combination of artificial intelligence with the hardware represented by embodied intelligence and even the industry has a large market to be developed."
Currently, the VC/PE industry is shifting from the past high-speed expansion and fierce competition situation of "the winner takes all" to a new stage of stable development of "the survivor takes all". Ji Wei, the founding managing partner of Meridian Capital, shared her thoughts on this topic: "How can market-oriented investment institutions survive longer? I think a necessary skill is to strengthen the commercial operation ability of high-quality assets, lock in top projects, and continue to deepen through more diverse fund attributes." Xu Xiaolin, the founding partner and chairman of HG Capital, said: "If there were no state-owned capital in the past three years, this industry would be more difficult. But in the long term, capital diversification is needed to truly form a unified national market."
Thought-provoking to Solve the Future of the Industry
In 2024, the "Hundred Model War" was in full swing. Entering the new year, DeepSeek emerged suddenly, attracting a lot of market attention. The popularity of the Chinese AI market continues to rise, and AI investment has also ushered in a new situation. Li Zhu, the founding partner of InnoAngel Fund, said: "The emergence of DeepSeek actually announced the end of the first stage of the competition in the language base large model. With the decrease in computing power costs, in the next one or two years, the AI applications for to C may be as diverse as the mobile Internet at that time." Fu Zhekuan, the chairman and founding partner of Chuangfu Capital, believes that the AI investment bubble trend will increase in 2025, especially in the field of humanoid robots. "We will continue to remain calm and invest."
The report of Zero2IPO Research Center shows that in 2024, the investment in semiconductors and electronic equipment led the heat, with the investment amount exceeding 100 billion yuan; the number of cases or the amount in multiple hard-tech fields rose against the trend. Regarding this, Hua Hua, the CEO of Hua Kong Fund, revealed the investment code: "In the past, our research was relatively calm, and we could wait and observe. Some projects even decided to invest after observing for two or three years. However, with the emergence of AI, we feel that the market is developing rapidly, and we often need to make judgments earlier and invest decisively."
For the healthcare industry, which has firmly ranked among the top three in investment heat in 2024, Wang Hui, the CEO of HighLight Capital, shared: "Last year, due to the sluggish IPO market and financing, many biomedical enterprises were cut off from the capitalization path, which also gave a new reminder to the founders - instead of chasing an uncertain window, it is better to achieve a real merger and acquisition exit with a flexible strategy. The valuation is actually just a feeling in the heart, and it is better to go with the trend."
In addition, the special session of the conference - the "Wave After Wave" theme exchange dinner also ended perfectly in the gentle sea breeze. This annual gathering not only shows the strategic foresight of excellent investment institutions, but also highlights the determination and wisdom of the investment industry in the wave of change. In the era of surging waves, we must not only adhere to the value anchor when the cold wave comes, but also keenly perceive opportunities when the spring river is warm, so as to stand out in the new cycle and achieve a win-win future.