Where exactly is the wealth of the ultra-rich flowing? When asked about financial management in a recent variety show, Ho Mario Chiu, son of Macau gambling magnate Stanley Ho, and his wife Ming Xi revealed a glimpse into the wealth management practices of top-tier billionaires. Ho immediately responded, "The family office," amusing his wife but inadvertently highlighting a common approach among the elite.
In recent years, "family offices" have become a standard for an increasing number of ultra-high-net-worth families. Examples include Ming Hui Investment, associated with Zhu Xingming, Chairman of Shenzhen Inovance Technology Co.,Ltd., and Li Ling Fund, linked to Wang Laichun, Chairperson of Luxshare Precision Industry Co.,Ltd. A family office is not merely about managing money; it represents a highly systematic wealth management structure covering asset allocation, investment decisions, tax planning, children's education, charitable projects, healthcare resources, and even the management of art and real estate.
Another prominent characteristic of these family offices is their steadfast focus on cutting-edge hard technology sectors. Behind currently hot companies like Qianxun Intelligent (embodied AI) and Shenzhen Future Brain Rhythm (brain-computer interface), one often finds the backing of top billionaire family offices. What strategic game are they playing? And what exactly is this mysterious "family office" frequently mentioned by the wealthy?
Unlike entrusting funds to banks or trusts, a family office means the wealthy "build their own team and make their own investments." The core objective is to solve the challenge of "creating wealth is easy, preserving it is hard." This model originated with the Rockefeller family and has quietly gained traction domestically in recent years. Due to an extreme emphasis on privacy and security, it remains shrouded in secrecy.
Recently, with the low-key emergence of Ming Hui Investment, its mastermind—Zhu Xingming, founder of Shenzhen Inovance Technology Co.,Ltd., and his family office—is gradually entering the public eye. Zhu, who leads the approximately 200 billion yuan market cap company and has appeared on the "Hurun Rich List," is a significant figure in the manufacturing sector and was once the "richest person in Yueyang, Hunan." The appearance of Ming Hui Investment offers a glimpse into the operations of a top-tier family office.
According to Tianyancha, Ming Hui Zhiyuan Investment (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. has a registered capital of 50 million yuan. Legal representative Pan Li holds a 99% stake, while Zhu Xingming holds 1%. This self-described "professional investment institution with a smart manufacturing industry background" operates with 2.5 billion yuan in proprietary funds and 10 billion yuan in reserve industrial capital, actively but quietly participating in the venture capital scene.
Ming Hui Investment adheres to a core strategy of "investing in hard tech." Its website states it "long-term focuses on global cutting-edge technologies, concentrates on strategic emerging industries, and specializes in the hard tech track." Early on, it participated in the A++ and B rounds of financing for Kunwei Technology, a "robotic force sensor company," investing tens of millions of yuan. The company focuses on high-precision force sensors, though Ming Hui's specific shareholding percentage has not been disclosed.
At the beginning of 2026, Ming Hui Investment made three consecutive moves: in January, it invested in Shenzhen Future Brain Rhythm, a "brain-computer interface company," acquiring a 4.38% stake; in the same month, it invested in Edge Creation Intelligence, an "AI computing company," for a 2% stake; and in February, it invested in Qianxun Intelligent in the "embodied AI field."
Its other investments include Hua'an Cryptography Technology with a 23.5% stake, and Qiaojie Digital Objects with a 3.33% stake. The website also lists investments in Xinchip Technology, focusing on power management chips; Shensuo Technology, involved in connectors and components; and Lubang Technology, specializing in optics. Additionally, it holds a 44.98% LP stake in Shenzhen Heavy Investment Xinyao No.1 Technology Investment Partnership.
Analyzing these portfolio companies reveals two commonalities: they are generally newly established and intensely focused on hard tech—advanced technologies requiring long-term R&D and difficult to imitate, such as chips, AI, and robotics. This indicates that China's first-generation industrial giants are using their family capital to "vote" for the most cutting-edge technological innovation.
Ming Hui Investment is not an isolated case. Incomplete research shows that increasingly more tycoons are establishing similar family investment platforms and channeling funds into hard tech sectors.
Wang Laichun, Chairperson of Luxshare Precision Industry Co.,Ltd., is a prime example. Her entrepreneurial journey is legendary: after failing the college entrance exam, she worked on factory assembly lines in Shenzhen for years before founding Luxshare and building it into the "Apple supply chain leader" with a market cap exceeding 370 billion yuan. Wang and her brother Wang Laisheng ranked on the "2025 New Fortune 500 Rich List" with a fortune of 131.52 billion yuan, earning her the title of "richest woman in Chaoshan."
She has now established Jiangsu Li Ling Venture Capital Co., Ltd., a family office founded in November 2021. The legal representative is Yi Lei, her son, who holds a 40% stake and serves as Executive Director and General Manager.
As early as January 2022, Li Ling Fund quietly appeared in the investor list for a startup financing announcement—Weina Hexin, a smart IoT chip design company, completed a tens of millions of yuan Pre-A round. Later, when "chip company" SMIC announced the joint establishment of Xinlian Power with industrial partners, Li Ling Fund committed 7.6 million yuan for a 1.52% stake.
Joe Tsai, Chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Limited, established the family office Blue Pool Capital in Hong Kong in 2015. Its investment portfolio is vast, covering hedge funds, healthcare, sports, the metaverse, and blockchain. It has invested in healthcare firms like Hua Medicine and Brii Biosciences, as well as frontier projects like the metaverse platform The Sandbox and blockchain infrastructure Polygon. Its assets under management exceeded $50 billion by 2022.
Shu Ping, wife of Haidilao founder Zhang Yong, set up a family office in Singapore in 2019. Prior to this, Haidilao had entered the venture capital space by establishing investment entities and acting as an LP for firms like Sequoia China, CDH Investments, Yunfeng Capital, and Zhongding Capital.
In May 2023, ByteDance founder and "China's richest man" Zhang Yiming established a personal investment fund called Cool River Venture in Hong Kong, sparking market speculation that he might be planning to set up a family office there.
These wealthy entrepreneurs are intensively establishing family offices and concentrating their capital on hard tech tracks. From chips and AI to robotics, they are extending their industrial布局 through family capital.
From Zhu Xingming to Wang Laichun, manufacturing titans are collectively "crossing over" into chips, brain-computer interfaces, and embodied AI. While it may seem like chasing trends, there is deeper intent. Bai Wenxi, Chief Economist of the China Enterprise Capital Alliance, stated, "This is not mere 'crossing over'; it's a combination of industrial extension and financial value appreciation."
The密集 establishment of family offices reflects not just a capital game but also the deep-seated anxieties of these leaders about their core businesses.
Take Luxshare Precision Industry Co.,Ltd. as an example. A key supplier to Apple, the company reported total revenue of 268.795 billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 15.91%; net profit was 13.366 billion yuan, up 22.03%. While the figures seem impressive, the structure reveals underlying worries. The annual report shows the consumer electronics segment contributed 224.094 billion yuan in revenue, accounting for a high 83.37%; revenue from the largest customer was 190.139 billion yuan, representing 70.74% of total annual sales. In other words, Luxshare's fate is deeply tied to a single company, Apple.
More importantly, profit margins are thinning. Luxshare's gross margin fell from 21.05% in 2018 to 10.41% in 2024, earning what is typically considered "hard-earned money."
High customer concentration and持续摊薄 profits are forcing Wang Laichun to seek alternative paths. Her answer lies within the investment portfolio of Li Ling Fund. The fund's investments in "chip companies" like Weina Hexin, SMIC, and Xinlian Power are almost all related to Luxshare's industry chain.
Bai Wenxi further pointed out, "Investing in hard tech can address dependencies on core components for the main business. For instance, Li Ling Fund's investment in Weina Hexin can secure chip supply for Luxshare's consumer electronics; Zhu Xingming's Ming Hui Investment's布局 in robotics strengthens Inovance's industrial automation solutions."
This strategy is already showing value. In September 2025, Luxshare partnered with OpenAI to co-develop consumer AI devices, expected to launch between late 2026 and early 2027. This signals a transition from an Apple contract manufacturer to a core AI hardware supplier, where the earlier chip investments form an essential foundation.
Bai explained this as using family capital to hedge against uncertainty in the main business. Beyond investment returns, the more critical aspect is building a technological moat for the core operations.
Regarding why these leaders spend heavily to establish their own family offices instead of entrusting funds to professional institutions, Bai Wenxi clarified: "Traditional private banks offer 'standardized packages' that cannot meet the deep need for industrial resource mobilization required by figures like Zhu Xingming. They are no longer satisfied being LPs; they want to leverage their extensive manufacturing resources to act directly as GPs, capturing projects that bank wealth managers neither understand nor have access to."
However, this model carries significant costs. Bai noted that a family office's annual operating costs are typically 1%-2% of assets under management and are only suitable for ultra-high-net-worth families with assets exceeding $300 million.
Shen Meng, Director of Chanson & Co., added, "China previously lacked a mature family wealth management mechanism. Services offered by banks and trusts often lacked professionalism and couldn't meet the needs of high-net-worth individuals. Family offices represent a newer form."
Shen also offered a different perspective, stating, "Currently, domestic family offices mostly serve as investment vehicles for high-net-worth groups. Their investments aim for high returns and aren't necessarily related to their original businesses." He further explained that many domestic family offices still appear as "investment tools," chasing trends and betting on sectors like VCs, with relatively weaker functions for wealth inheritance. "A true, traditional family office should center on family needs for long-term allocation, not chase trends like a VC."
According to New Fortune data, in 2025, 72% of the actual controllers of A-share listed companies were over 60 years old. The next 5-10 years represent a critical window for succession in Chinese family businesses. Theoretically, family offices should handle wealth inheritance and long-term asset allocation, but in reality, most still play the role of "another venture capital fund."
This狂欢 first involves the source of funds. The influx of hundreds of billions into hard tech, where manufacturing magnates bet family wealth on chips, brain-computer interfaces, and embodied AI, represents both strategic foresight to hedge core business risks and potentially a high-stakes gamble.
Data from professional research firm Zero2IPO shows that in 2024, the fundraising scale in China's venture capital market was 1.44 trillion yuan, a 53.5% drop from the 2021 peak; the number of new funds was 3,981, down 76% from the 2021 peak, with continued weak investment from market-driven LPs and unprecedented fundraising pressure on GPs. Entering 2025, the market warmed slightly. The number and scale of newly raised funds reached 5,039 and 1.65 trillion yuan, up 26.6% and 14.1% year-on-year, respectively.
Simply put, LPs are the fund's investors, bearing limited liability only up to their investment amount and not participating in fund management; GPs are the fund managers, responsible for establishment, investment, management, and exit, bearing unlimited joint liability, and charging management and performance fees.
As market-driven LPs recede, family offices with long-term proprietary capital have unexpectedly become the core source of funds sought by GPs. A partner at a Beijing VC firm told media outlet "Investment界": "The current fundraising environment forces GPs to seek capital from wealthier families, which is why the family office concept is so hot."
Chen Quan, General Manager of the M&A and Restructuring Department at CCB Trust, observed that newly wealthy individuals have strong equity investment demand, "especially keen on investing in tech innovation, but most lack trustworthy investment channels." Supply and demand align perfectly, bringing family capital and hard tech projects together.
However, getting money in is easy; getting it out may not be. The commercialization cycle for hard tech and the liquidity needs of family wealth may be fundamentally mismatched. Bai Wenxi pointed out that projects like brain-computer interface and embodied AI have high R&D costs and long cycles; brain-computer interface typically takes 8-10 years to commercialize. Current high valuations reflect market expectations for future technological breakthroughs rather than actual profitability.
For Zhu Xingming, this is not an easy choice. In July 2021, Zhu divorced his wife Zhong Jin, splitting shares worth approximately 5.39 billion yuan; in September of the same year, he gifted shares worth 1.453 billion yuan to his daughter Zhu Hanyue. Family wealth is never static—divorce settlements, inheritance for children—each event can trigger liquidity needs. Locking large sums into a track that may take a decade to show results is itself a heavy bet on patience.
Reality already offers a reference. In 2024, only one company in the brain science field, NDRV (6681.HK), listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The IPO price was HK$3.22 per share. On the listing day, the share price closed at HK$3.33, up 3.42%, with a market cap of HK$4.217 billion. By February 28, 2026, the share price had risen to HK$4.7, with a market cap of HK$6.384 billion, an increase of about 51.4% since listing.
However, behind the stable stock price lies continuously expanding losses. In the first half of 2025, the company achieved revenue of approximately 100 million yuan, a notable year-on-year increase of 92.81%; but its net loss was about 126 million yuan, a further 10.53% increase in loss year-on-year. This reflects the true situation of hard tech projects: the door to commercialization hasn't opened, but the burn rate has already accelerated.
The robotics track also has undercurrents. Qianxun Intelligent, backed by Ming Hui Investment, saw its valuation surpass 10 billion yuan in a single funding round, but it faces a truly competitive landscape. Beyond star projects like Unitree and Zhiyuan Robotics, dozens of companies are competing on the same track.
When family offices enter and professional VCs follow, projects easily raise funds. But if commercialization remains elusive years later, who will ultimately provide the exit? The answer may take years to reveal itself. But one thing is certain: as the first generation of entrepreneurs bets their family wealth on an "unseen future," this game is just beginning.