Sp.01 | Debriefing China's Primary Market in 2025 (Ft. Crossroads)

December 29, 2025

Today is a special episode, because in this one, I'm not the one doing most of the asking — someone else is asking me the questions.

That someone is Koji, founder of Crossing and venture partner at ZhenFund. Around this time last year, Koji also pulled me in for a conversation, broadly about the state of China's primary market over the past year, so this has become something of an annual tradition. In this episode, Koji asked me many questions. I can't say I have all the most precise answers, but I'll do my best to share what I know.

I also asked Koji the one question I've been most curious about: In today's era of rapid, bewildering change, as an entrepreneur, an investor, and a KOL, what posture does he think one should adopt in facing the present moment? How should one calibrate the ratio of praise to criticism? What is the right stance?

Crossover with @十字路口Crossing

🎙️ Voices Yuan Cheng Yang, Koji | Founder, Crossing Jing Liu | elsewhere

📀 BGM Happy Together — Chung Ding Yat

⏱️ Timestamps

China's Primary Market in 2025 00:06:57 Liu Yuan and Manus, Li Feng and Insta360

00:09:41 The positioning battle among a new generation of GPs

Fundraising realities across industries 00:11:02 Large language models: the story continues

00:17:08 Software: Chinese startups can build stunning products too

00:21:04 Hardware: the China opportunity, fast becoming consensus

00:25:22 Robotics: rolling forward

New shifts among investment institutions 00:28:52 Broad consensus, narrow disagreements

00:31:15 Mainstream funds: Sequoia, Hillhouse, IDG, Qiming, Matrix Partners...

00:37:11 Internet CVCs: Alibaba, Ant, Baidu, Meituan, JD.com, Xiaohongshu...

00:39:48 Solo GPs: Alphaist, Creek Stone, tiny funds, Changpeng Zhao, Huiwen Wang...

00:42:30 Accelerators: Shenzhen InnoX Academy, Spark Lab, MiraclePlus, major cloud providers...

Loose talk on funds and media 00:47:37 What kind of person is suited for VC?

00:54:36 The evolving organizational forms of funds

00:58:04 The institutionalization and personalization of media

01:03:20 The values of KOLs in the AI era