GGV Capital is back.

Find these people with strong vitality and connect them to the future.

01

At the beginning of the year, GGV Capital organized a communication meeting and announced a set of figures: The investment amount in 2025 reached 2.5 billion RMB, with the investment pace 2.5 times faster than that in 2024. In terms of exits, more than 2 billion RMB was retrieved. Four companies went public last year, and there are more than 20 in the pipeline for the next year. —— A 2.5 - fold surge in investment amount, with nearly 3 billion RMB invested in a year. For an institution with a management scale of over 37 billion RMB, this figure is not small.

In terms of organizational structure, in 2025, the number of the team increased from 73 to 82. Two post - 80s GPs were promoted internally, namely Wu Chenyao and Li Haojun.

Wu Chenyao and Li Haojun joined GGV Capital in 2012 and 2014 respectively. Both have gone through a complete cycle of the mobile Internet and have excellent investment cases in hand. The latter led the investments in projects such as BOSS Zhipin and Jushuitan, while the former was involved in Xiaohongshu, Hello Bike, Keep, etc. Besides these two, several young partners were also promoted.

The increase in investment scale and the steady growth of the team all indicate a new signal: GGV Capital is back and has clearly found its current positioning.

As early as in an interview last year, Fu Jixun mentioned that they were ready to take action. At that time, it was also discussed that GGV Capital should act as a bridge and connector, and layout in the Asian market from different identities and perspectives. Currently, aiming to connect Chinese entrepreneurs with the Asian and even overseas markets, GGV Capital further proposes to be a super node.

Fu Jixun said that this decision was made because several forces are reshaping the current world economy: AI is moving from concept to implementation, the global migration of the manufacturing supply chain, the dynamic game of geopolitics, and the gradual stability and smoothness of the exit channels in the domestic capital market.

These are both objective phenomena and macro - concepts. The important thing is that as a VC that has been established for 21 years and has witnessed the ups and downs of countless entrepreneurs, according to Fu Jixun's observation, "Everything we do today is going with the trend." Looking internally, both Fu Jixun and Li Hongwei are from Singapore and have a background in the official technology system. After more than 20 years of investment in China, they are very "down - to - earth" and naturally have the "connecting" gene.

Fu Jixun mentioned the appearance of VC in the United States in the 1970s. Helping and accompanying entrepreneurs step - by - step was the norm. But now, what GGV Capital has to do is to "transform scattered demands into a product - based solution" in the context of going global. So GGV Capital established a middle - office, recorded podcasts, carried out business development, and built an ecosystem. Although everyone is doing these things, the core is whether it can effectively solve the problems of entrepreneurs and form a positive cycle to continue.

02

From the mobile Internet to AI, the investment paradigm has changed, but the logic of investing in people remains the same. What interests me is that Li Haojun mentioned that the changes in the AI era are unprecedented. The vision, pattern, drive, and resilience of this group of AI entrepreneurs are generally "the best" among the several waves of entrepreneurs he has contacted.

My curiosity is that there have been excellent young people in every generation. Why are the young people in the AI era better than those in the previous generations? If the answer is yes, is it the AI tool that makes this generation of young people better, or are they "born that way"?

Wu Chenyao believes that in the era of AGI, the younger generation of entrepreneurs should think more deeply about some values. For example, how to judge the value of human work in the future? How should the economic society develop at that time? Should AI be used to create immersive content of "entertainment to the death", or to liberate everyone's labor force? How can people reflect their own values? These are questions that the previous generation of entrepreneurs did not need to answer.

He also observed that many of the new - generation entrepreneurs are deeply influenced by Elon Musk. Elon Musk believes that in the future, work is just a choice in life, not a necessity. His thinking has inspired many people. Establishing a company may generate continuous product revenue, but whether this revenue is long - term and sustainable in the future depends on whether the value provided by the product remains valid in the future. Many of today's new - generation entrepreneurs actually think from the first - principle perspective.

Fu Jixun believes that the advantage of young people lies in "having no burden." "Many Internet people view AI from an Internet thinking perspective, which is wrong. The advantage of young people is that they are AI - native. They dare to think and have no inertia."

With the AI tool, I do see more and more people. They may not be "entrepreneurs" in the traditional sense, nor necessarily young people, but they are not restricted by geography or traditional rules. They are truly "super individuals." These "super individuals" have burst out unprecedented energy. For example, Peter Steinberger, the developer of the recently popular Clawdbot, created this Agent with AI in 10 days, and even boosted the sales of Macmini.

So, in my opinion, investment institutions do have a bit of a "young - people worship syndrome," but this "worship" is also a standard post - hoc and in line with VC standards. It is the path of least resistance. After all, what VCs worship is never the age number, but the strong vitality that can break the old order and define new rules. And I think this super node of GGV Capital is not only connecting entrepreneurs with overseas markets, but also finding these people with strong vitality and connecting them to the future.

03

As for the specific investment directions, GGV Capital's answer with real money is that most of the 2.5 billion RMB was invested in the AI application and embodied intelligence tracks.

Let's first look at AI applications. As the industry gradually matures, the most important asset comes from the application ecosystem. This is the experience from the past few cycles. The new opportunities brewed by AI have excited investors. Although the size of the opportunity space is still a proposition to be verified, those still in the game have to believe that there is a possibility of a hundred flowers blooming in the application layer, and even new platform - type opportunities may emerge.

Li Haojun and Wu Chenyao, the two newly - promoted managing partners, have both worked as product managers in large companies and have experienced the prosperity of the mobile Internet after 2014 as investors. They have cases and experience, and are in their prime, able to understand how history rhymes similarly and keenly sense the new propositions brought about by the new wave. They can also easily resonate with younger AI entrepreneurs.

If we examine the problem within the framework of the mobile Internet analogy, we can't avoid the old - fashioned topic. In terms of the current AI applications compared to the mobile Internet, which year is it now? Is it a suitable time to make a move?

They didn't give a definite number. This is hard to predict, but they believe that although the process may be fast or slow, the direction and general trend remain the same. Since they have sufficient funds, they might as well accompany these young people on their adventures. The AI application projects they prefer are like this: in a vertical direction, focus on a vertical application that solves a definite demand, and at the same time have a good team and a reliable founder.

In addition to software, hardware became a sub - track that capital scrambled for last year. The most direct driving force is, of course, the wealth effect of Insta360's listing.

This is very interesting. Originally, investing in hardware was a typical non - consensus in the VC industry. Li Haojun also mentioned that hardware was not regarded as a particularly good entrepreneurial direction in the past, and the business model was not very attractive. The current entrepreneurial and capital enthusiasm can be viewed from two aspects: on the supply side, hardware "military academies" represented by DJI have boosted the talent density in the industry, and VCs and FAs are flocking to Shenzhen; on the demand side, although there may not be any revolutionary new demands, the integration of AI software and hardware provides an unprecedented product experience, which also makes most of today's AI hardware not positioned for end - consumers in terms of cost - effectiveness.

"The demand may not be new, but the experience must be something that previous products couldn't achieve." Li Haojun noticed that there are a number of companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the market. Which one can reach a valuation of billions of dollars depends on the generalization ability of the product and the maturity of the industrial chain. Most projects in the hardware market are small and scattered, which also brings about a change in investment thinking: top - down research and analysis may not be effective, and specific cases need to be analyzed specifically.

Finally, let's talk about the embodied and robot tracks that attracted the most capital last year. On the one hand, the leading body and brain companies have attracted tens of billions of funds, and it's inevitable to talk about the issue of bubbles. The "veteran" Fu Jixun said that when investors enter the market today, they need to consider whether they can bear the subsequent uncertainties and how they will react after the bubble bursts. This reminder is very reasonable. You can refer to the ups and downs of the autonomous driving industry in the past decade. As an institution that has experienced industry cycles, GGV Capital naturally has a broader time scale when looking at the tracks.

In addition, the embodied track is a long - chain track. The upstream includes core components and basic software, the middle - stream includes humanoid robot products and non - humanoid embodied products, and the downstream covers diverse application scenarios such as industrial manufacturing, logistics and warehousing, and medical care. In short, the opportunities are not limited to those star robot companies we saw on the Spring Festival Gala.

This time, two sub - directions are mentioned. Wu Chenyao gave an example: First, robots focusing on specific scenarios, such as logistics robots, ship - cleaning robots, and medical surgical robots, and even robot products related to laboratory automation. In fact, there were players like Geek+ and the surgical robot company Ronovo in the early years. But now, various hardware products facing specific scenarios and with execution capabilities have reached a considerable level of intelligence, the operation efficiency has been further improved, and the overall operation and maintenance cost has been reduced, bringing a new wave of opportunities.

Second, the business related to embodied data. Currently, the development of embodied intelligence has reached a bottleneck: it is known that the rapid improvement of the performance of large - language models relies on the scaling law. However, the text - type data required by large - language models can be directly obtained from the Internet, while the real physical interaction data required by embodied intelligence models is more difficult to collect. If there is no effective data collection plan, the cost of model research and development will definitely keep rising. So the data business has also become a direction that GGV Capital focuses on in the embodied chain.

After talking about the key - layout tracks, I have a curiosity. Whether it's AI software and hardware or the embodied intelligence industrial chain, the tracks that VCs have reached a consensus on in the past year have been overly concentrated, and the time window from non - consensus to consensus has become shorter and shorter. In this context, investors seem to be in an extreme state: either there is nothing to invest in, or they rush to invest. In this situation, will GGV Capital adjust its investment strategy?

I asked this question to Fu Jixun. He echoed the previous - mentioned positioning and believed that GGV Capital's unique advantage in institutional competition is that it can help enterprises go global, whether it's in production and manufacturing or the implementation of specific scenarios. Taking robots as an example, places like Singapore and the Middle East lack sufficient local labor resources and have a stronger real - world demand for the application of emerging technologies. This month, the team plans to organize an AI robot Demo Day in Singapore, hoping to take some good Chinese enterprises overseas and bring together LPs and relevant government departments to see what interesting chemical reactions can occur.

"In terms of scenario selection, Singapore is an excellent pilot area and a high - quality test field." Fu Jixun said. It's still about the unique identity and perspective.

What Li Haojun mentioned is also very inspiring to me. He believes that the current industry competition should be viewed from the perspective of jointly expanding the market. "The biggest impact of the geopolitical changes in the past few years is actually the issue of liquidity. Today's liquidity has not returned to the previous level. So within the existing framework, capital should be concentrated in a few areas with the greatest advantages to make these areas bigger and stronger."

I think what he means is that it's not just the tracks that are shrinking. When capital also becomes a limited resource, the limited resources should be concentrated in the directions that can generate sufficient benefits, rather than being widely and dispersedly invested in various fields as in the stage of capital overflow.

This makes me think that even for the embodied intelligence track, which attracted the largest amount of capital last year, some practitioners sighed that it's like drinking a glass of beer without foam. Whether there is a bubble and how intense the competition is depends on the reference system and the stage. Compared with the depression and coldness of the previous two years, an appropriate amount of bubbles is, after all, a kind of beauty in the upward period.

This article is from the WeChat official account "China Venture Capital", author: Liu Yanqiu & Zhang Nan. Republished by 36Kr with authorization.