The richest woman in Hunan with a fortune of 100 billion buys the leading Taiwanese casing manufacturer
Late at night on May 14, 2026, the state banquet hall of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing was ablaze with lights. Elon Musk, the world's richest man, Tim Cook, the head of Apple, and Jensen Huang, the godfather of NVIDIA - these three names are enough to make any wealth list tremble - were sitting around a table. And sitting right in the middle of Musk and Cook was a woman who was born in a mountain village in Hunan, lost her mother at the age of 5, dropped out of school at 15, and started her business with HK$20,000.
Her name is Zhou Qunfei.
She has no prominent family background, no diploma from a prestigious university, and no personal connections to back her up. Her initial assets were just a pair of hands for grinding glass and an unyielding spirit. Thirty years later, her net worth exceeded tens of billions. Her Lens Technology supplies products to almost all the well - known technology giants in the world - the touch screens of iPhones, the central control screens of Teslas, and the folding screens of Huawei all bear her mark.
The logic of wealth is almost brutally clear in Zhou Qunfei: it's not about holding on to what you have, but always betting on the next era.
Just four days after the state banquet ended, on May 18, 2026, Lens Technology quietly issued an announcement - it acquired 27.81% of the equity of Juteng International from the Zheng Liyu family, a manufacturing family in Taiwan, at a price of about HK$734 million, nearly at a 50% discount. And it immediately announced that it would launch a full takeover offer, aiming for the controlling stake.
A Big - Discount Merger and Acquisition
Recently, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange received an eye - catching announcement. Lens Technology announced that the company had signed a share purchase agreement with Nanya Management Co., Ltd., Zheng Liyu, and Lin Meili (collectively referred to as the "Sellers"). The buyer would conditionally acquire approximately 27.81% of the issued shares of Juteng International Holdings Limited held by the Sellers at a purchase price of HK$2.20 per share, with a total consideration of approximately HK$734 million.
What attracted the most attention from the market in this transaction was its low pricing.
The announcement showed that the transaction price of HK$2.20 per share represented a discount of approximately 45.68% compared to the closing price of HK$4.05 on Juteng International's last trading day - almost a 55% discount. In the history of mergers and acquisitions in the capital market, it is rare to take over from a major shareholder at such a large discount.
Lens Technology also announced that, on the premise of the completion of the share purchase agreement, it would issue a conditional voluntary full cash offer to all the shareholders of Juteng International at that time in accordance with the "Code on Takeovers and Mergers" in Hong Kong, so that the offeror's shares accepted under the offer plus the shares previously held would exceed 50% of the voting rights of the target company after the deadline. After the completion of this transaction, the company would enjoy at least 50% of the voting rights of Juteng International and would become the controlling shareholder of Juteng International.
In other words, Lens Technology's move is not just a financial investment, but aims to obtain the actual control of Juteng International and complete a full - fledged strategic merger and acquisition.
Regarding the strategic significance of this transaction, the board of directors of Lens Technology believes that this strategic merger and acquisition is in line with the company's long - term development strategy, is conducive to enhancing the core capabilities of precision manufacturing, strengthening the resilience of the supply chain, and improving the global layout. It will enhance the company's voice in the global precision manufacturing competition pattern and is in the interests of the company and all shareholders.
Lens Technology seems to have got a good deal by acquiring the major shareholder's equity at nearly a 50% discount. Did the Zheng Liyu family suffer a loss by selling at a discount? The answer may not be so simple.
Juteng International and the Zheng Liyu Family: A Business Card of Taiwan's Manufacturing Industry
What's the background of Juteng International? Behind this company is a Taiwanese family that has been deeply involved in the 3C manufacturing industry for more than two decades.
Juteng International Holdings Company was established in 2000 and currently has 40,000 employees. It was founded by three original shareholders, Zheng Liyan, Zheng Liyu, and Hong Zaijin. It is a professional manufacturer of 3C product components, with production bases all over East and South China and Taiwan.
Juteng International's main customers include well - known domestic and international brand customers and large OEM/ODM manufacturers. It has a market share of over 31% in the global notebook computer casing market, leading its peers, and was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2005. The fact that it can occupy more than 30% of the market share in the highly competitive global notebook casing market shows Juteng's profound accumulation in the field of precision metal structural parts manufacturing.
Zheng Liyu is the core figure of this company.
Zheng Liyu is one of the founding shareholders of Juteng International Holdings Limited, and his wife, Lin Meili, holds some shares. The Sellers in this share sale are Zheng Liyu, Lin Meili and their Nanya Management Co., Ltd.
However, Juteng International's business has not been ideal in recent years. Juteng International's 2025 performance report showed that its revenue was approximately HK$5.731 billion, a year - on - year decrease of approximately 4.9%; its gross profit was approximately HK$268 million, a year - on - year increase of approximately 54.8%; and the loss attributable to the equity holders of the company was approximately HK$493 million. Although the gross profit has rebounded, the company is still in an overall loss state, with a net loss close to HK$500 million. This has largely weakened the Zheng Liyu family's willingness to hold the shares.
The Zheng Liyu family's decision to sell the shares at a price close to 50% of the market price is indeed surprising. However, considering Juteng's continuously pressured financial data in recent years and the continuous weakness of the global PC market, this decision has its practical considerations - if no strategic acquirer can be found to inject new customer resources and industrial synergy into the company, the long - term low stock price may be an even greater loss.
From a Migrant Worker to the "Glass Queen"
In 1970, Zhou Qunfei was born in a mountain village in Hutian Town, Xiangxiang City, Hunan Province. Before her birth, her father became blind in both eyes and lost two fingers in an accident while making homemade explosives. Her mother passed away when she was 5, and the family was in poverty. The family of five relied on her father's bamboo basket weaving for a living. Such a starting point would be an insurmountable barrier in any era.
At the age of 15, Zhou Qunfei dropped out of school and left her hometown. She went to Shenzhen alone to work. After getting a stable job at the Aoya Optical Watch Glass Factory, she worked during the day and attended evening courses in business, accounting, and technology at Shenzhen University near the factory at night. She also obtained an accounting certificate and a driver's license.
In 2003, Zhou Qunfei became a partner by contributing technology and equipment and established Lens Technology in Shenzhen, focusing on the R & D, production, and sales of mobile phone protective window glass. In the same year, the company received an order for mobile phone glass screens from Motorola. Later, orders from mobile phone manufacturers such as HTC, Nokia, and Samsung poured in.
The real turning point came in 2007. Steve Jobs released the first - generation iPhone, which completely revolutionized mobile phones towards all - glass touch screens. The technological requirements set by Jobs were so high that no manufacturer in the world could meet them at that time. Zhou Qunfei led her team to jointly tackle key problems with Apple's engineers for three months, broke through the key technology, and successfully mass - produced the first - generation iPhone glass panels. Since then, she has won a long - term contract with Apple. This bold bet laid the foundation for Lens Technology's high - speed growth in the following more than a decade.
In March 2015, Lens Technology was listed on the Growth Enterprise Market of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. In October of the same year, Zhou Qunfei topped the list of the richest women on the Chinese mainland with a fortune of 50 billion yuan. It took her less than thirty years to go from a penniless mountain village girl to the richest woman in the country.
The accumulation of wealth has continued to accelerate. As of May 15, 2026, the market value of Lens Technology was approximately 180 billion yuan, and Zhou Qunfei's net worth exceeded 100 billion. She is known as the "Glass Queen". It is worth mentioning that the 2025 annual report of Lens Technology disclosed a long list of long - term partners: in the list of consumer electronics terminals, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Honor, Google, Meta, etc. are included; in the list of intelligent vehicle terminals, Tesla, CATL, BMW, Mercedes - Benz, Volkswagen, Li Auto, NIO, BYD, etc. are included. This customer list covers almost half of the global consumer technology and intelligent mobility industries.
In her business philosophy, technical details are the core. Since helping Motorola solve problems, Zhou Qunfei has been fond of technology. It is said that in some processes that are not very demanding, Zhou Qunfei still requires the error to be controlled within 0.1 millimeters. That's why the company can be tied to Apple for a long time.
A Bold Bet on the Future
For Lens Technology, spending HK$734 million to obtain the control of a listed company with a 30% market share in the global notebook casing market and complete precision metal processing capabilities is quite cost - effective.
For the Zheng Liyu family, Juteng International has been suffering continuous losses in recent years, and its stock price has been hovering at a low level for a long time. It is difficult to reverse the situation by itself.
Introducing a strategic shareholder like Lens Technology, which has a deep layout among global top - tier customers such as Apple, Huawei, and Tesla, can not only bring new order sources to Juteng but also enhance the company's overall competitiveness and valuation space by leveraging Lens Technology's technological accumulation in the field of precision manufacturing. Exchanging a low price for a high - quality strategic partner may not be a bad deal in the long run.
Of course, this transaction still faces certain uncertainties. According to the "Code on Takeovers and Mergers" in Hong Kong, after Lens Technology completes the acquisition of the Zheng Liyu family's shares, it must issue a full takeover offer to all shareholders. If a large number of other shareholders accept the offer, the actual expenditure will be significantly higher than HK$734 million.
From a more macro - strategic perspective of Lens Technology, this acquisition represents Zhou Qunfei's profound judgment on the coming of the AI hardware era and her early positioning.
From a small watch glass workshop in Shenzhen at the beginning to becoming the core supplier of Apple's first - generation iPhone, and now sitting at the same table with Musk, Cook, and Huang at the state banquet, every key decision of Zhou Qunfei has hit the major beats of the technology industry. This time, she is betting on the integration of manufacturing capacity for AI - end hardware.
From the Zheng Liyu family's more than twenty - year entrepreneurial efforts to Zhou Qunfei's thirty - year journey from scratch, two precision manufacturing families from different backgrounds and regions have come together under the wave of AI. This transaction is not just a number game in the capital market, but also a microcosm of China's manufacturing industry's active pursuit of change and self - reshaping in the new technology cycle.
This article is from the WeChat official account “Rongzhong Finance” (ID: thecapital), author: Abu, published by 36Kr with authorization.