Sometimes, slow is fast. Qiu Guogen, known for his philosophy of "a heavy sword has no edge, great skill appears clumsy," has recently set his sights on the "intelligent visual perception industry," making a series of moves this year that have already cost approximately 6 billion yuan.
On the evening of October 13, STAR Market-listed company SmartSens (688213.SH) disclosed a report on changes in shareholder equity. The three platforms under Qiu Guogen and his wife—Chongyang Investment, Chongyang Strategic Investment, and Chongyang International—through participation in private placements and secondary market purchases, collectively hold 37.1397 million shares of SmartSens, accounting for 8.46% of total share capital, formally crossing the 5% threshold that triggers disclosure obligations.
As of October 23, SmartSens closed at 110.16 yuan per share, up 4.37%, with a total market capitalization of 48.368 billion yuan. Based on this calculation, the "Chongyang system" holdings are valued at approximately 3.9 billion yuan. This marks Chongyang Investment's first stake disclosure since 2026 and the only listed company in which its multiple platforms currently hold more than 5%.
Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co.,Ltd. (002415.SZ) disclosed its third-quarter report on October 16, showing that as of the end of the third quarter, the Chongyang Strategic Zhicai Fund held 61.821 million shares of Hikvision, an increase of 388,500 shares compared to the end of the second quarter. This is already the second consecutive quarter that the Chongyang Strategic Zhicai Fund has increased its position in Hikvision.
As of October 23, Hikvision closed at 33.78 yuan per share, up 4.19%, with a total market capitalization of 309.6 billion yuan. SmartSens and Hikvision both belong to the intelligent visual perception industry chain. Furthermore, Hikvision is a customer of SmartSens—SmartSens is an upstream chip supplier to Hikvision—one sells the "eyes," the other builds the complete machine.
Within half a month, the "Chongyang system," led by private equity veteran Qiu Guogen, has bet on both a customer and a supplier, making large-scale wagers on the AI visual industry chain. Are these merely two incidental position adjustments, or is it a closed-loop chess game laid out along the industry chain? SmartSens listed on the STAR Market in May 2022. It is a globally leading CMOS image sensor manufacturer whose main business is the research and development, design, and sales of high-performance CIS chips, with products covering security surveillance, machine vision, intelligent automotive electronics, smartphones, and other multi-scenario applications.
Financial reports show that SmartSens generated 4.6 billion yuan in revenue in the first half of 2026, a year-over-year increase of 21.48%, with net profit attributable to parent company shareholders of 528 million yuan, up 33.15% year-over-year. In the security surveillance niche, SmartSens' CIS shipments have long ranked among the top globally. Therefore, what the "Chongyang system" has taken a stake in is not a chip company spinning stories out of thin air, but one that has already achieved scale in the rigid-demand security scenario and is extending its products toward intelligent driving and machine vision.
According to the equity change report disclosed by SmartSens on the evening of October 13, the "Chongyang system" collectively holds 37.1397 million shares of SmartSens, representing an 8.46% stake. According to Wind data, this holding not only surpasses the 8.22% stake held by Huaxin Investment under the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Phase II, making it the largest among SmartSens' top ten circulating shareholders, but also ranks second only to SmartSens' actual controller Xu Chen's 13.67% stake, making it the second-largest shareholder. Moreover, SmartSens is currently the only listed company in which the Chongyang system holds more than 5%. It can be said that Qiu Guogen has placed his heaviest bet squarely on this CIS chip stock.
Hikvision is the domestic leader in security and intelligent IoT, and also an important end customer of SmartSens. SmartSens' rapidly growing smart security and AIoT business is precisely aimed at the scenarios guarded by Hikvision. The Chongyang Strategic Zhicai Fund returned to Hikvision's top ten circulating shareholders list in the 2026 first-quarter report, with an initial holding of 53.5655 million shares, increased its position by 7.8671 million shares to 61.4326 million shares in the second quarter, and added another 388,500 shares to reach 61.821 million shares in the third quarter.
During the same period, the "Chongyang system" also had the Chongyang Strategic Juzhi Fund newly enter the top ten circulating shareholders in the second quarter of 2026, but it had already dropped off the list by the end of the third quarter. The funds involved in this stake in SmartSens are four products—Chongyang Strategic Zhicai, Yingzhi, Huizhi, and Juzhi—while those holding Hikvision are precisely the Zhicai Fund and Juzhi Fund among them. With the same batch of products, one foot on upstream chips, one foot on downstream complete machines, betting on both customer and supplier simultaneously—is the "Chongyang system" targeting a single stock, or the entire AI visual industry chain itself?
Qiu Guogen once wrote his creed in the preface to "Wealth Is the Monetization of Cognition" by Chongyang partner Shu Taifeng: rushing for quick success and pursuing overnight riches is human nature, yet it is the great enemy of long-term investment success. In many cases, slow is fast. He also stated in a media interview that to achieve excess returns, one must have a deep understanding of fundamentals and not invest in what one does not know well.
The "Chongyang system's" positioning in SmartSens and Hikvision began long ago. According to SmartSens research records, as early as June 2024, before the private placement, Chongyang Investment appeared on its list of research institutions and has appeared multiple times since. Before participating in the private placement, Qiu Guogen and his wife, through three controlled platforms, already collectively held 19.6785 million shares of SmartSens, representing a 4.89% stake—just one step away from the disclosure threshold.
According to the equity change report, the "Chongyang system" has been continuously buying in the secondary market for six consecutive months since April 2026, with the heaviest buying in August, exceeding 13.68 million shares in a single month. Over the past half year, secondary market purchases are estimated to exceed 1.8 billion yuan. The equity change report states that this increase is a financial investment, not aimed at seeking actual control, and there are no plans to increase or decrease holdings in the next 12 months.
Becoming the second-largest circulating shareholder without touching control rights or pursuing short-term realization—what exactly is the "Chongyang system" after? A person affiliated with Chongyang Investment once told the media that CIS is equivalent to the eyes of AI-era terminals, and the investment in SmartSens is mainly based on optimism about the long-term growth prospects of China's CIS industry. This person further pointed out that with upstream component costs currently high and consumer terminal demand sluggish, the market pays relatively little attention to CIS companies, which instead offers better odds for investment.
SmartSens' private placement fundraising focuses on three major R&D industrialization projects: high-performance imaging CIS, intelligent driving CIS, and CIS for visual AI and edge AI ASIC, focusing on automotive-grade chips and AI visual chips—a direction that happens to overlap with the track Qiu Guogen favors. The Chongyang Strategic Zhicai Fund first appeared among Hikvision's top ten circulating shareholders in the 2022 annual report, with a new holding of 47.7758 million shares; it then underwent multiple rounds of position adjustments in 2023 and was removed from the top ten circulating shareholders in that year's third-quarter report; after more than two years, this fund only returned to the top ten circulating shareholders in the 2026 first-quarter report. On October 17, 2026, Qiu Guogen personally led a team to attend Hikvision's third-quarter earnings briefing.
With one hand pressing on the downstream AIoT leader and the other taking a stake in the upstream CIS chip maker, what Qiu Guogen appears to be buying is not a single stock, but the domestic substitution of the entire AI visual industry chain. Wu Bin, an AI industry analyst at a leading securities firm, mentioned when discussing SmartSens' private placement list that a terminal leader taking a stake differs from pure financial investment—it is essentially a deep binding of upstream and downstream within the industry chain. Applying this statement to Qiu Guogen, his research on this chain has long transcended individual stocks and extended to the entire industry chain.
Qiu Guogen's willingness to bet on both upstream and downstream may also stem from his in-depth research on the industry chain. He has personally conducted research on Hikvision multiple times and appeared at earnings meetings of CIS peers such as GalaxyCore, tracing the sensor chain from chip design to packaging and testing from beginning to end. The Chongyang research team also recently published its judgment on the AI stage. Three fund managers under its banner—Tan Wei, Chen Fentao, and Zhao Yang—formed a consensus in recent views that expectations for AI mid-to-upstream hardware have been fully realized, and the main battlefield of the next stage is shifting toward downstream applications.
Tan Wei drew an analogy, saying this is somewhat like when internet infrastructure was laid out and applications such as portal websites and e-commerce emerged in large numbers; Chen Fentao believes the explosion of edge-side applications could bring opportunities similar to the mobile internet industry since 2010. From 2023 to 2025, the AI wave swept through capital markets while Qiu Guogen "stood still"; in 2026, as the CIS chip track gradually cooled, he made heavy bets. When "don't invest in what you don't know, slow is fast" has become Qiu Guogen's label, will his approach work in the AI era?
Qiu Guogen was born in 1969 in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. He later entered the Investment Economics Department of Renmin University of China, earning a master's degree in economics. From 1993 to 1995, he worked at an institution under Junan Securities. At the end of 1995, he resigned to start his own business, founding Yima Investment with his wife Luo Yi; in 2001, he moved to Shanghai to found Chongyang Investment. Over the following two decades, this institution grew from 50,000 yuan in initial capital into a private equity giant managing over 10 billion yuan.
The most classic battle in Qiu Guogen's investment history was in September 2006, when the securities industry was in its "darkest hour." He acquired 150 million legal-person shares of China Merchants Securities from Shenzhen Huaqiang at 1.53 yuan per share; in November 2009, China Merchants Securities listed at an issue price of 31 yuan, which was about 20 times higher than the 1.53 yuan acquisition cost—and this equity ultimately appreciated nearly 30-fold. What best embodies his "slowness" is his investment in Xinhecheng. On December 22, 2017, Shanghai Chongyang Strategic Investment Co., Ltd., under Qiu Guogen, through the Chongyang Strategic Huizhi Fund, spent 600 million yuan to participate in Xinhecheng's private placement, subscribing to 21.4286 million shares at an issue price of 28 yuan per share. Subsequently, multiple Chongyang products entered the top ten shareholders one after another, holding firm during weak markets and adding positions during upturns—holding for more than eight years. In the first quarter of 2026, Xinhecheng rose 37.16% in a single quarter to a historic high, and Chongyang exited the top ten circulating shareholders accordingly. According to calculations, this investment accumulated at least 1.5 billion yuan in gains over eight years.
Qiu Guogen and his wife operate through three major platforms—Chongyang Investment, Chongyang Strategic Investment, and Chongyang International. In Chongyang Group's equity structure, Qiu Guogen holds 78% and his wife Luo Yi holds 22%. In 2026, Qiu Guogen and Luo Yi appeared on the Hurun Global Rich List with 7.5 billion yuan in wealth, ranking 3,635th. However, Luo Yi only plays a role in the "Chongyang system's" top-level equity arrangements and strategic matters, and does not lead Chongyang Investment's daily operations as a front-line executive. The burden of daily operations rests on Qiu Guogen and a team of professional managers. Chairman Wang Qing, General Manager and Vice Chairman Tang Jinxi, Co-Chief Investment Officer Chen Xin, and Chief Research Officer He Jianqing each perform their duties, while Qiu Guogen serves as Chief Investment Officer, sitting at the core of the investment decision committee.
From power, consumer goods, chemicals, and security to today's AI visual chain, Qiu Guogen's investment map is undergoing a track migration. But this migration is not without risk. Trading congestion in the hard-tech track is continuously rising. SmartSens has a six-month private placement lock-up period and post-stake disclosure constraints, while Hikvision's inventory and cash flow still need to be monitored. These heavy positions are not quick money that can be moved in and out at any time.
"A heavy sword has no edge, great skill appears clumsy"—this phrase originally comes from Jin Yong's "The Return of the Condor Heroes" and was the Sword Demon Dugu Qiubai's annotation on the dark iron heavy sword. In media interviews, Qiu Guogen has also used this phrase to describe his investment philosophy. He believes that investment is an extreme sport without limits. There is no other shortcut to success; "correct methods plus diligence" is the "shortcut." In his view, the ideal state is: research one step ahead, invest half a step ahead. This requires overcoming excessive self-confidence in human nature on one hand, and on the other hand, after repeatedly checking and thinking and confirming one is correct, "learning to hold firm in solitude."
From acquiring China Merchants Securities legal-person shares in 2006, to betting on Xinhecheng in 2017, to taking a stake in SmartSens in 2026, over three decades Qiu Guogen's style has always been "slow"—contrarian, steady, planning before acting, and using slowness to counter speed once he is certain. Before the tide recedes, no one can assert whether this turn is foresight or adventure, but this private equity veteran who does not chase trends has already used his positions to move himself to the next card table.
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