Mi Lei (second from left), founding partner of Zhongke Chuangxing, partner Guo Xin (first from right) with Wang Lei (second from right), chairman of Zhongke Wenge, and CEO Luo Yin (first from left) at the listing ceremony.

This article is an original piece from IPO Early Know.

Author｜Stone Jin

According to IPO Early Know, Beijing Zhongke Wenge Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhongke Wenge") officially listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on June 26, 2026, with the stock code "1956", becoming the first stock of "general decision-making large model" in Hong Kong and also the "first stock of national team AI".

Since its establishment, Zhongke Wenge has received investments from several well-known institutions. Among them, Zhongke Chuangxing has continuously invested in multiple rounds of Zhongke Wenge since leading its Series A financing in 2018, making it a senior independent investor under the 18C regulations.

It is worth mentioning that this is Zhongke Chuangxing's fifth IPO project this year, following Zhipu, Changguang Chenxin, Xizhi Technology, and Yushi Technology. At the same time, this is also the third technology achievement transformation project that has borne fruit in Beijing since Zhongke Chuangxing established its Beijing headquarters in 2016.

It is worth adding that Zhongke Chuangxing made an important decision in 2016—to establish a Beijing office in addition to its headquarters in Xi'an, forming a dual-headquarters structure.

At that time, most investment institutions chose to place their Beijing offices in financial centers such as Guomao and Financial Street—where it is impressive and closer to money. The Zhongke Chuangxing team, however, has always focused on the forefront of technology achievement transformation, locking its sights on the technology innovation atmosphere-rich Haidian in Beijing. Just then, the Zhongguancun Intelligent Manufacturing Street, which focuses on "hard technology" incubation, gradually started. Zhongke Chuangxing deeply participated in the co-construction of Zhongguancun Intelligent Manufacturing Street, becoming the first early-stage investment institution to settle in, and rented its first office in Beijing at Tsinghua Garden Hotel, next to the southeast gate of Tsinghua University, setting up its first incubator and investment fund.

“At that time, the office environment was very simple, and at first glance, it didn’t look much like an investment institution's office. But this was the best choice, being closer to universities and research institutes, and closer to top scientists, as well as the most active place for knowledge value. Zhongke Chuangxing emphasizes the ESK value system, where knowledge value is often the most important source of long-term value for hard technology investments,” recalled Mi Lei, founding partner of Zhongke Chuangxing.

This location choice was later validated by the market. This year, Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen also mentioned the scope of this entrepreneurial "golden circle" when reviewing the investment portfolio—south of Tsinghua, east of Peking University, west of Xueyuan Road, and north of Dazhongsi. Projects falling within this box have significantly outperformed those outside the box By 2017, Zhongke Chuangxing turned its attention to the direction of natural language processing and knowledge graphs, and found a highly potential entrepreneurial team of scientists at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences—WENGE AI. At that time, this team had been deeply engaged in the fields of artificial intelligence and multimodal big data for over a decade, with the dream of transforming cutting-edge technology into social productivity, stepping out of the laboratory and diving into the entrepreneurial wave, thus WENGE AI was born.

In May 2018, WENGE AI completed its Series A financing, with Zhongke Chuangxing as the lead investor, providing significant support for the company's multilingual and big data technology research and market layout. Subsequently, Zhongke Chuangxing continued to increase its investment through Phase I and Phase II funds, becoming a long-term companion in WENGE AI's process of transforming scientific research achievements into industrialization.

In addition to financial support, Zhongke Chuangxing has also continuously helped WENGE AI expand key resources, linking industry partners, investment institutions, and high-end talents. The core executive team of WENGE AI has also participated in the "Zhongke Chuangxing·Hard Technology Champion Camp" and the "Hard Technology Exploration Program," engaging in deep exchanges with leading enterprises and hard technology entrepreneurs, promoting the docking of industrial resources and cooperation opportunities.

Rooted for ten years, the transformation of scientific and technological achievements is bearing fruit

Furthermore, from Zhipu to Yushi Technology, and then to WENGE AI—these three projects span the three core AI tracks of natural language processing, autonomous driving, and decision intelligence. At the same time, the starting point for the development of these three companies is located in this approximately 2.5 square kilometer "golden circle" of scientific and technological achievement transformation in Haidian, Beijing.

The underlying logic behind this is simple, Mi Lei pointed out that as we enter the era of hard technology and artificial intelligence, the most important production factors are shifting from land, machines, and capital to knowledge, technology, and intellectual productivity. The voice of core scientific research talents and technological leaders in the industry is becoming increasingly significant, and the capital's dependence on knowledge is rising.

This means that the most core capability in the future is not just having capital, but whether one can connect knowledge, understand knowledge, organize knowledge, and establish deep cooperative relationships with knowledge creators. Therefore, the areas with the highest talent density are most likely to give birth to the next hard technology unicorn.

Looking back, Zhongke Chuangxing's choice in 2016 to root itself in the "golden circle" of scientific and technological achievement transformation in Haidian, Beijing, was based on this underlying logic. Internal data from Zhongke Chuangxing shows that as of now, among the over 600 hard technology companies incubated by the team, about 150 are located in Beijing. More than 95% of these Beijing-based projects are scientific and technological achievement transformation projects, most of which come from well-known universities such as Tsinghua University and Peking University, as well as research institutes under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Of course, Zhongke Chuangxing's ten years of deep cultivation also relies on the support of Beijing and Haidian. In October 2018, the Beijing Municipal Government approved the establishment of the Beijing Science and Technology Innovation Fund—this is the first large-scale mother fund focused on hard technology investment, and Zhongke Chuangxing became one of the first institutions to receive its support. Subsequently, the Beijing Science and Technology Innovation Mother Fund and Haidian District continued to provide funding support for multiple hard technology funds of Zhongke Chuangxing At the same time, over the past decade, the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission and the Zhongguancun Management Committee have provided special risk subsidy support for the newly established funds and early project investments of Zhongke Chuangxing. The municipal and district governments have continuously supported its incubator construction for many years. Zhongke Chuangxing has been recognized as a benchmark incubator in Beijing and one of the first construction support units for high-quality incubators in Haidian District. This year, it was recommended by the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission and recognized as one of the first excellent incubators by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Looking back, it is precisely the long-term patience of Beijing and Haidian towards hard technology that has allowed Zhongke Chuangxing to take root here for ten years, accumulating strength and finally reaping the fruits of technology transfer—three invested companies have successively opened the doors to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Continuously Actively Layout Opportunities Brought by the Spillover of Large Model Capabilities

In fact, over the past decade, Zhongke Chuangxing's layout in the AI field has expanded from point to surface, from early misunderstanding to concentrated harvest today.

Upon review, Zhongke Chuangxing began its layout in the field of AI infrastructure, specifically in photonics and optical chips, in 2013. In 2016, Zhongke Chuangxing systematically invested in the AI field along the underlying logic of "data - computing power - algorithms": starting from the data and computing power ends, laying out sensors and semiconductor chips, especially optical chip projects; subsequently focusing on algorithm directions such as natural language processing and knowledge graphs through industry research.

In terms of specific projects, the team invested in autonomous driving company Yushi Technology in 2016, optical communication company Chengke Microelectronics in 2017, quantum computing company Benyuan Quantum and knowledge graph company Zhongke Wenge in 2018, and optical computing company Xizhi Technology, optical communication company Yuanjie Technology, and natural language processing company Zhipu in 2019.

Currently, early projects such as Zhipu, Yushi Technology, and Zhongke Wenge have all gone public. Zhongke Chuangxing's investment layout continues, and after the explosive popularity of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, Zhongke Chuangxing has launched a comprehensive investment layout around AI Infra, AI models, AI applications, embodied intelligence, and AI4S.

In the AI Infra field, investments have been made in large model training inference acceleration company Qingcheng Jizhi, next-generation TPU company Chaowei Wujing, and edge AI chip company Yezhixin; in the AI model field, investments have been made in large model companies such as Zidong Taichu; in AI applications, investments have been made in agent company Jidian Qiyuan and consumer smart hardware company Weiguang Dianliang; in the embodied intelligence field, investments have been made in general robotics company Zhiyuan Robotics, embodied brain company Xingyuan Zhi, dexterous hand company Yuansheng Technology, and simulation platform company Songying Technology; in the AI4S field, investments have been made in companies such as Shenshi Technology.

Currently, large model capabilities are experiencing an unprecedented leap, breaking through the critical point from "usable" to "easy to use" in key areas such as language, multimodal, video, code, and tool invocation. A significant window of opportunity for large model dividends has already opened.

The spillover of large model capabilities has brought about a new round of innovation opportunities in AI software, embodied intelligence, AI4S, etc. Zhongke Chuangxing will continue to actively layout investments.

Little known is that the offices of Zhongke Chuangxing's founding partners Mi Lei and Li Hao are named "Mianbi Zhe"—a reference from Liu Cixin's "The Three-Body Problem," which resonates with Zhongke Chuangxing's investment trajectory: choosing to patiently persevere during times of non-consensus With three projects successively landing on the Hong Kong stock market, it not only verifies Zhongke Chuangxing's foresight in the transformation of technological achievements but also confirms its long-term investment philosophy—daring to "warm the cold bench" by firmly supporting scientists' entrepreneurship when the technology has not yet been fully recognized by the market.

In other words, Zhongke Chuangxing has collectively demonstrated through a "hard technology" realization that true long-termism will ultimately be rewarded by time