Qiming Venture Partners' Zhang Ao: Six Years with NorthMed, Strong Confidence in China Healthcare Innovation Fundamentals
From Qiming Venture Partners' perspective, an increasing number of Chinese medical innovations are demonstrating internationally leading clinical value, and their global competitiveness is rapidly rising.
According to IPO Zaozhidao, Shenzhen Northmind Life Science and Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Northmind Life") officially listed on the STAR Market on February 5, 2026, under the stock code "688712.SH".
As the first domestic medical device company with a product portfolio covering both intravascular functional fractional flow reserve (FFR) and imaging intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), Northmind Life has received investments from multiple renowned institutions including Qiming Venture Partners since its founding.
Specifically, Qiming Venture Partners led Northmind Life's Series C financing in 2020 and continued to support the company's development in its Series D round. Prior to the IPO, Qiming Venture Partners held over 6% of Northmind Life's shares, making it one of the major institutional investors.
In fact, before investing in Northmind Life, Qiming Venture Partners had already accumulated numerous successful cases in cardiovascular and other medical device fields, and had developed a deep understanding of innovative medical devices. The firm has maintained strong interest in the substantial existing market and active, multi-directional growth opportunities in the cardiovascular intervention space.
"When we first got to know Northmind Life, we were very impressed by the rich product pipeline the company presented, and the differentiated advantages and leading competitiveness of its core products. We believe this reflects Song Bo's (note: Song Liang, founder, chairman and CEO of Northmind Life) team's understanding of and attitude toward the industry — a style that is down-to-earth, rigorous, and delivers on its promises. We believe in the future represented by entrepreneurs like Song Bo, post-1980s and younger generations of medical device founders," said Ao Zhang, Partner at Qiming Venture Partners.
In Zhang's view, the core reason Northmind Life has been able to continuously break foreign monopolies, fill domestic market gaps, and rewrite the situation where China's coronary artery disease clinical precision diagnosis completely relied on imported products is that Dr. Song Liang established a strategic layout focused on building a strong product portfolio and company capabilities. Under this framework, rather than blindly pursuing registration speed, the company has consistently insisted on developing the best, most differentiated, and most competitive products.
**"For over ten years, this strategy has been unwaveringly implemented, and this is precisely the core reason shareholders have strong confidence in the company. In fact, in the relatively frenzied private financing environment, this places extremely high demands on a team's resolve. Song Bo and his team's refusal to blindly pursue speed, and instead their respect for science, technology, clinical realities, patients and doctors, and their commitment to making great products, commands our deep admiration," Zhang added. **"Of course, during the company's development, it also encountered some serious challenges. At these critical moments, the team quickly and clearly identified core issues, decisively cut non-essential spending, and focused all efforts on advancing core objectives, ultimately navigating through these difficulties and steadily progressing toward greater success."
When discussing expectations for Northmind Life after its listing, Zhang emphasized that the company still has several notable new products worth watching, including continued strengthening of its coronary product line as well as expansion into high-potential new areas such as electrophysiology, which will be realized year by year after going public.
"We expect Northmind Life to become an emerging leading enterprise in China's cardiovascular intervention field that maintains innovative vitality and continuously supplies the market with high-value, highly innovative products. At the same time, Northmind Life's products also contain international market potential that has not yet been fully activated and realized. In recent years, some important overseas validation clinical trials and post-market clinical studies could not be launched as scheduled due to financial constraints. We are confident that after the IPO, the company can carry out deeper internationalization efforts, including clinical education and market activities."
Of course, given the "cold spell" medical companies experienced in capital markets in recent years, Northmind Life's path to listing was not without obstacles. Zhang believes that companies still need to persist in making good products, developing differentiated, competitive products with international market potential, with the core goal of building a good company and becoming a great company. "When a company is truly ready, an IPO will come naturally."
Notably, in 2025, Qiming Venture Partners invested in over 30 projects in the healthcare innovation field, with cumulative contributions exceeding 3 billion yuan**, with some of these investments decided in the second half of 2024, when most institutions in the primary market were extremely cautious about deploying capital in healthcare.
Zhang stated that Qiming Venture Partners maintains strong confidence in the fundamentals of China's healthcare innovation, including innovative medical devices and innovative drugs. "We are seeing more and more Chinese healthcare innovations demonstrating internationally leading clinical value, with global competitiveness rising rapidly. We believe that China's clinical experience, engineering teams, and entrepreneurial spirit, combined with China's supply chain advantages, can cultivate a generation of innovative medical device products with global competitiveness. We hope to have the opportunity to accompany such entrepreneurs, empower these quality products, and jointly build great medical device companies originating from China."
Source | IPO Zaozhidao
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Qiming Venture Partners was founded in 2006. Currently, the firm manages 11 USD funds and 7 RMB funds, with total assets under management reaching $9.5 billion. Since its inception, Qiming Venture Partners has focused on investing in outstanding early and growth-stage companies in Technology and Healthcare.
To date, Qiming Venture Partners has invested in over 580 high-growth innovative enterprises, of which more than 210 have listed on the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited, Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, or exited through mergers and acquisitions. Over 80 portfolio companies have become recognized unicorns or super-unicorns.
Many of Qiming Venture Partners' portfolio companies have grown into the most influential companies in their respective fields, including Xiaomi (01810.HK), Meituan (03690.HK), Bilibili (NASDAQ:BILI, 09626.HK), Zhihu (NYSE:ZH, 02390.HK), Roborock (688169.SH), Hesai Technology (NASDAQ:HSAI, 02525.HK), UBTECH (09880.HK), WeRide (NASDAQ:WRD, 00800.HK), HyperStrong (688411.SH), Insta360 (688775.SH), Unisound (09678.HK), Biren Technology (06082.HK), Zhipu (02513.HK), Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals (603087.SH), Tigermed (300347.SZ, 03347.HK), Zai Lab (NASDAQ:ZLAB, 09688.HK), CanSino Biologics (688185.SH, 06185.HK), Schrödinger (NASDAQ:SDGR), MicroPort EP MedTech (688617.SH), Sanyou Medical (688085.SH), Amoy Diagnostics (300685.SZ), SinoCellTech (688520.SH), Insilico Medicine (03696.HK), Hepb Therapeutics, Yuanxin Technology, MediLink Therapeutics, LaNova Medicines, StepFun, and others.