Oasis Capital to Deliver Keynote at 2025 ChinaVenture Annual Summit

On April 17, at the 19th China Investment Annual Summit, Jinjian Zhang, founding partner of Oasis Capital, delivered a keynote speech titled The Decade of AI Investment.

Below is a transcript of his remarks, compiled by ChinaVenture:

Hello everyone! Over the past two years, Oasis Capital has arguably been one of the most aggressive investors in AI and embodied intelligence in China. There's been a lot of discussion lately about whether there's a bubble in this space. I think there absolutely is. But the word "bubble" itself carries a premise — how do you define the magnitude of the opportunity? If you compare an era's opportunity to a glass of beer, the foam on top might seem extraneous. But if you see it as an ocean of stars, what's surging isn't foam — it's waves.

In the next 10-15 minutes, I'll share how we view this wave of intelligent revolution.

We started talking about Agents in July 2023, likely the earliest in China. At the time, we repeatedly told media that the biggest opportunity in this AI wave wasn't foundation models, but Agents. The industry was still fixated on which model to chase, but I believed that wasn't the essence of things. Today, everyone's talking about AI and Agents, but I think we still haven't touched the core. Because even now, I believe we've vastly underestimated how transformative this AI will be for human civilization and social structure.

This isn't a technological transformation — it's a social one. Every aspect of our lives, our relationships with friends, family, children, even our cognitive patterns, will undergo profound change.

I was chatting with a professor recently who said with a wry smile: "I have a dilemma now. First, I don't dare give open-book exams anymore, because AI can answer everything, so I can only do closed-book tests. Second, students don't come to me with questions anymore — they feel the psychological barrier of asking me is too high. They ask AI everything, then come ask me after. So as a top university professor, what is my purpose?" I said: "Well... your purpose is going to change a lot." He continued: "What's more anxiety-inducing is that I used to be my child's hero. I'd help them construct life ideals. But now they ask AI everything. Even the classic 'where did I come from' question — they learn about the biological conditions for human life from AI. So as a father, what is my purpose?" I said: "You're a provider of resources. You can support them."

So the profound changes AI brings go far beyond technology. Over the past two years, we've constantly emphasized the depth and breadth of this transformation. Today, through ChinaVenture's platform, I hope everyone considers this question. Because the time left for us, for civilization as a whole, isn't that much. This isn't an investment opportunity, nor a technological shift — it's a transformation of human civilization itself.

Human civilization has undergone roughly four paradigm shifts. First was 300,000 years of foraging, then 10,000 years of farming after the plow's invention. The industrial age lasted only 300 years. Notice that across these three transformations, human civilization accelerated at roughly 30x each time. Every new civilization was 30 times faster than the last. If this pattern holds, the next civilization brought by today's AI transformation would last about 10 years. Perhaps by 2030, 2035, or 2040, the structures of society, social relationships, even symbols of industrial civilization like steel mills, will fundamentally change. But are we really ready? Today we shouldn't be discussing how data should operate, or what value Agent creates, but rather: in the next 10-15 years, if we're to compress 300 years of industrial revolution history, what transformation are we undergoing, and what should each individual do?

The commercial world we take for granted today is essentially a byproduct of the industrial revolution. Before it, "surplus labor" didn't exist as a concept — everyone was self-sufficient, bartering goods. The industrial revolution created, for the first time in human history, large-scale surplus productivity, and with it the concept of "commodities." Because commodities needed circulation, "channels" emerged; channels spawned marketing; marketing nurtured brands. None of these concepts of commercial civilization existed from humanity's start — they appeared over the past 300 years. All our methodologies and commercial understanding of the world were shaped in these 300 years.

Looking back, our educational philosophy was about transmitting knowledge and resolving doubts. After the industrial revolution, this was gradually deemed impractical, as there was urgent need to rapidly train industrial workers. In 1870, a major educational reform occurred globally. For the first time, literacy rates became education's core purpose, because only with higher literacy could people read operation manuals and become qualified industrial workers. Thus we entered the era of specialized education, with ever-finer subdivisions and new majors constantly emerging to meet industry demand. In this process, some began representing capitalist interests, and capitalism gradually rose; others represented workers' interests, and Marxism emerged, with the working class entering the historical stage. None of these were innate to humanity — all were massive changes brought by the industrial revolution, gradually appearing over 300 years.

Today, many view AI with excitement — it's not just interesting, it improves work efficiency, it's a good investment target because it can indeed generate massive growth. But more importantly, everyone should consider what kind of transformation AI will bring to our lives. In the next 10-15 years, we may re-experience these 300 years of history. Are we truly prepared? As individuals, as a society, as an era — are we really ready?

Of course, some have benefited from technological transformation. In the past, many industries changed dramatically. For example, Britain's textile industry grew 260,000-fold; transportation grew 20,000-fold due to textile and commodity trade; steel grew 800-fold. Beyond these, construction, shipping, agriculture and others experienced massive growth. From Watt's steam engine refinement in 1763 to its real integration into daily life in 1785, over the subsequent 150 years, numerous Fortune Global 500 companies emerged. Humanity took roughly 150 years to produce a large batch of excellent consumer companies including Sony, Unilever, IBM, Siemens, and HP. In the following 150 years, even more world-class companies were born.

But note: if the next 5-10 years compress what previously took 150 years, then by 2035, perhaps 50-100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 may be new firms created in less than 20 years since Transformer's emergence in 2018. So in the coming 10-15 years, anyone could potentially found a Fortune Global 500 company. Yet today we may not even know what we're doing, or feel lost in confusion.

AI is not merely a technological paradigm shift, but a profound social transformation. This transformation is reshaping society itself, reconstructing the value chain of every industry, not just a single industry or information revolution. Its influence transcends any single sector or technological revolution. Take programming: globally there are roughly 60-70 million practitioners. As AI continuously innovates programming technology, eventually perhaps only millions may remain. This order-of-magnitude change reveals essential transformation: when millions of developers using AI tools accomplish what 60 million once did, it means the industry's entire value chain has been intelligently reconstructed. When 50-60 million people leave an industry, how do they realize their value? How do they recombine their core capabilities with this industry? I believe this is a core question everyone, along with entrepreneurs, investors, and society as a whole, should explore.

In the coming 10-15 years, society will undergo massive upgrading. This isn't just relevant to investors or entrepreneurs — it's relevant to every person, every participant in society. This may be a huge opportunity: in 10-15 years, you could found a Fortune Global 500 company. But simultaneously, it may be a huge danger, because the "hard work pays off" we often spoke of may no longer apply in many industries. Because no matter how hard you work, you might surpass your colleagues, but you cannot surpass electricity. For AI, as long as there's power, it can keep working. Therefore, we need to discover our core capabilities.

In this era, if the industrial revolution transformed humans from physical laborers to mental laborers, then in the coming era, we may need to transform from mental laborers to what I'd call "heart-force" laborers. I believe that true entrepreneurs and founders become who they are not because they're the smartest, wisest, or hardest-working, but because in critical moments, they're the most prescient, courageous, and faithful. So in the next era, when AI as a productivity tool and lever tremendously develops every individual's creativity, I believe the glimmer each individual shows in this era should be the courage, trust, conviction, and self-evolutionary breakthrough that their heart-force manifests.

Finally, we must ask ourselves: what is our core capability? As entrepreneurs, what do we truly believe? What do we hope to achieve with AI as a tool in this era? I believe, in this great era, this is what everyone should truly care about.

Looking back to Oasis's founding, we've always emphasized: in this era, information is overloaded. The rise and fall of Chinese entrepreneurs over these past decades — if there's one core thing for entrepreneurs, it's their "vitality," that resilience and capacity for continuous evolution. I believe it's this vitality that defines each person as who they are. In the AI era, as society changes ever faster, I believe more people need to return to their own vitality. Every entrepreneur is a seed with vitality, and this era is fertile soil. When these vital seeds grow in this era, the era itself will naturally become an oasis. I hope that in the coming year, we can all return to our vitality, consider how to embrace society-level changes in the AI era, and find our place in this time.

That's what I wanted to share with you today. Thank you all!