Zhou Qunfei has made another move.

Recently, the "Queen of Apple Supply Chain" has made a new move — Zhongke Huis Embodied Intelligence (Hunan) Co., Ltd., jointly initiated and established by Lens Technology, Beijing Zhongke Huiling and Hunan Huaxia Investment Group, was officially founded in Changsha.

It is reported that the company focuses on the R&D of dexterous hands and embodied operation capabilities. This means that after nurturing a unicorn valued at over 10 billion yuan, Zhou Qunfei has officially stepped from behind the scenes to the front line, launching a new startup in person. From corporate strategic investment to individual LP, then to joint venture entrepreneurship, this Hunan "working girl" has completed the promotion of her identity, transforming from the "female leader" of an enterprise with hundreds of billions of market value to the "operator" of cutting-edge technology.

Zhou Qunfei's Latest Move

According to the disclosed information, Zhou Qunfei's latest action targets the most core link of embodied intelligence — dexterous hands.

The reason why Zhou Qunfei is willing to enter this field stems from her profound understanding of Chinese manufacturing accumulated over the past 30 years. In Zhou Qunfei's view, in the past, Chinese manufacturing solved the problem of "precise manufacturing", that is, the tolerance was controlled at the micron level and the yield rate was increased to over 99%; but the competition focus in the next decade will be "smart manufacturing" — enabling machines to respond flexibly and make autonomous decisions like humans in unstructured environments.

Coincidentally, dexterous hands are the most direct carrier of this capability, which is undoubtedly of great attraction to Zhou Qunfei who started her business in the manufacturing industry, allowing her to achieve a key leap in this core capability, that is, from "precision manufacturing" to "precision operation".

Thus, with this certainty about the future evolution of the manufacturing industry, Zhou Qunfei stepped down to start her new business in person.

It is worth mentioning that an old friend also started this business together with Zhou Qunfei — Zhang Zhengtao, founder and chairman of Zhongke Huiling. The resume shows that Zhang Zhengtao is a researcher and doctoral supervisor at the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. For a very long period of time, his work was carried out in the laboratory to overcome the systematic challenges of computer vision and intelligent robots.

Retrospective investigation shows that the two have long-standing connections. Before the establishment of Zhongke Huis, the main entity under Zhongke Huiling founded by Zhang Zhengtao was the well-known Lingbao CASBOT in the industry, and Lens Technology is prominently listed in the shareholder lineup of this company. Data shows that in June 2025, Lingbao CASBOT completed a nearly 100 million yuan angel+ round of financing, which was led by Lens Technology and followed by Tianjin Jiayi and other institutions. For this investment, Lens Technology stated at that time that the series of dexterous hands independently developed by Lingbao CASBOT achieved sub-millimeter precision operation and flexible grasping, which could fill the key gap in the industry.

Based on this, the cooperation between the two sides has evolved from a simple capital investment to industrial collaboration.

After co-founding Zhongke Huis with Zhang Zhengtao, Zhou Qunfei's strategy is also very clear: in terms of technology, Zhongke Huiling provides support, responsible for the technology of dexterous hands, as well as the whole machine system and motion control system; in terms of supply chain, Lens Technology gives full play to the advantages of "precision manufacturing" and "large-scale delivery" to provide support for large-scale industrialization; in terms of scenarios, Huaxia Group brings real application scenarios such as cultural tourism and education.

This means that from the very beginning, Zhou Qunfei has planned to connect the three cards of "technology, manufacturing and scenarios", making the three closely linked and indispensable. At the same time, there is another key figure in the core team of the new company — CEO Yang Ping, who is responsible for bringing technology to the market. This CEO is also a recognized "senior practitioner" in the embodied intelligence market.

The Hidden VC Map Emerges

In fact, as the leader of an enterprise with hundreds of billions of market value, Zhou Qunfei has always maintained high sensitivity to new things.

Before starting her own business in person, Zhou Qunfei has long been an "old face" in the embodied intelligence track. However, in the past, she mostly appeared in the identity of corporate strategic investor or individual LP.

In the just-passed July, Crossdimensional Intelligence completed a 1 billion yuan Series B financing with a post-investment valuation of over 10 billion yuan, becoming a unicorn in the field of embodied world model. Subsequently, the outside world found that Lens Technology became its investor behind this unicorn. Just like the cooperation with Zhongke Huiling, Zhou Qunfei and Crossdimensional Intelligence also have long-standing "connections".

At that time, the simulation model and visual sensor of Crossdimensional Intelligence were put into the production line of Lens Technology, solving the problems of unordered sorting of workpieces and precision flexible assembly. In April 2026, when Zhou Qunfei visited Crossdimensional Intelligence, out of satisfaction with the effect of the production line implementation, she made a decision on the spot: she would invest in Crossdimensional Intelligence in her personal name. Thus, the story of Zhou Qunfei and Lens Technology participating in the financing of Crossdimensional Intelligence together later came into being.

However, careful sorting shows that Zhou Qunfei's investment map is not dominated by personal investment, but takes the dual platforms of "Lens Technology" and "Changsha Qunxin Investment Consulting Co., Ltd." as the core, the former is responsible for industrial collaboration, and the latter is responsible for financial allocation.

First, let's talk about Lens Technology. As Zhou Qunfei's core industrial territory, Lens Technology plays the role of CVC, and its investment logic is mostly centered on "industrial collaboration" and "strategic positioning". Specifically in the embodied intelligence track, Lens Technology has successively invested in Crossdimensional Intelligence, Jia'an Intelligence, Pudu Technology, Qingtian Rental and other enterprises.

Among them, Crossdimensional Intelligence focuses on "how to train robots", Jia'an Intelligence specializes in "how to make products more precise", Pudu Technology solves "how to expand production scale", and Qingtian Rental opens up "how to make scenarios usable". The four companies are connected together, which just forms a complete closed loop from underlying technology, core technology, large-scale manufacturing to scenario implementation.

For the chip and semiconductor sector, Lens Technology also follows this logic: it bets on Xinai Technology, which focuses on "how to make chip packaging substrates thinner"; it invests in Chixin Semiconductor, which deeply develops "how to realize the interconnection of all things with domestic UWB chips". As for Jiamei Xinxin, it focuses on "how to make the signal more stable with radio frequency chips". In short, the three enterprises have accurately occupied the three key links of "packaging materials, short-range communication and radio frequency signals", enabling Lens Technology to realize the full-stack layout from materials to core components, and then to system solutions.

Finally, let's take a look at Changsha Qunxin Investment. Although this company is controlled by Zhou Qunfei and her husband, Zhou Qunfei herself holds up to 98% of the shares. Compared with the strategic positioning of Lens Technology, Changsha Qunxin Investment is mainly focused on financial investment. First, it has invested in many professional institutions as an LP, including Shanghai Junhe Tongxing, Kunqiao Capital, Hengbang Capital, etc., which makes Zhou Qunfei "indirectly" hold a large number of giants such as Changxin Technology and BOE.

Take its indirectly held Ningbo Junhe Tongcheng Equity Investment as an example, the latter participated in the Series C+ financing of Changxin Technology in February 2022, with a post-investment valuation of 107.789 billion yuan. With the listing of Changxin Technology, its current market value is as high as 3.43 trillion yuan. This means that in only 4 years, Zhou Qunfei, as an LP, has achieved an amazing result that the valuation of the invested company has increased by 31 times.

Second, Changsha Qunxin Investment also makes direct investments, and has invested in many hard technology projects such as Xinai Technology, Chixin Semiconductor, Zhongshan Precision, Jia'an Intelligence, Maijing Technology and so on.

It can be said that the dual-platform operation of "industry + finance" allows Zhou Qunfei to not only find the support of technology in her main business, but also obtain rich returns in financial investment, and maintain sufficient flexibility in emerging tracks. It can be described as clear division of labor and mutual support.

Three "Queens of Apple Supply Chain" Are All Investing in Embodied Intelligence

Not only Zhou Qunfei, while this "Queen of Apple Supply Chain" started her own business, Wang Laichun from Luxshare Precision and Zeng Fangqin from Lingyi iTech have also set their sights on embodied intelligence and made their own layouts.

Like Zhou Qunfei, Wang Laichun, who also started as a "working girl" in Shenzhen, although her layout is a little slower, she acts decisively. In April 2026, Luxshare Precision made a strategic entry and jointly led the $200 million Series B financing of Zhongqing Robot. This company focuses on the R&D of general-purpose humanoid robots and is one of the star projects in the industry. In 2025, in an investor exchange meeting, Luxshare Precision revealed that the company already has the core capabilities of the whole industrial chain of humanoid robots. Except for batteries and some joint modules, it can independently complete the precision processing of key components such as harmonic gears, and it is expected to ship 3000 humanoid robots in that year.

When talking about this track, Wang Laichun clearly stated at the annual general meeting of shareholders: "We will pay attention to it while learning, and invest prudently."

Another one, Zeng Fangqin, who resigned to start her business at the age of 41, fully intervened in embodied intelligence with an "All in" attitude. In June 2025, Lingyi iTech officially released its robot strategy, announcing that its annual investment in this field will be no less than 200 million yuan in the future, with the goal of becoming "the world's top 3 embodied intelligence hardware manufacturers". For humanoid robots, this "female leader" once compared it to the "brick phone" stage in the early development of smart phones, but Zeng Fangqin always firmly believes that this road will eventually move towards the "smart phone era".

In terms of specific business, Lingyi iTech has provided customers with hardware such as head assembly, dexterous hand assembly, and limb assembly, and has experience in joint development and complete machine assembly. In June 2026, Lingyi iTech was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, raising about HK$83 billion, of which more than HK$40 billion will be invested in related fields such as humanoid robot hardware.

The three "Queens" have three different strategies: Zhou Qunfei starts a business in person, turning "investing in others" into "investing in herself"; Wang Laichun advances steadily, investing in projects while improving internal capabilities; Zeng Fangqin takes a long-term running attitude to build embodied intelligence into the second growth curve. Although their paths are different, they have stepped onto the same river, fighting in the new battlefield of embodied intelligence.

Looking back, this may be related to the too many similarities between them: in order to raise the product yield from 30% to nearly 100% of the standard, they all once tried their best to overcome technical problems; in order to get the admission ticket of the high-end supply chain, they have all been deeply engaged in the industry for decades, and finally successfully knocked on the door of international giants such as Apple, Tesla and Foxconn.

From consumer electronics to embodied intelligence, now they are standing on the same starting line again. Some people say they have caught up with the trend of the times, but the trend never comes by waiting, but by striving. There were tens of millions of people who went south to work in that year, but very few of them could stand on the top of the mountain; the times will give everyone opportunities, but how far they can go in the end depends on the solid skills they have mastered.

This article is from the WeChat official account "ChinaVenture", author: Chen Mei, editor: Wang Qingwu, authorized for release by 36Kr.