Shen Nanpeng moderated the dialogue. Author/Zhou Jiali reporting/Investment World PEdaily. "Feels like half the venture capital world is in Hong Kong." This week, Hong Kong welcomed its Fintech Week, and the International Financial Leaders Investment Summit also kicked off for the fifth consecutive year. As one of the highest-level annual financial events in the Asia-Pacific region, various players converged on Victoria Harbour. Investment World learned from the scene of a rare sight — Hong Sequoia China founding and managing partner Shen Nanpeng held a closed-door dialogue with Moonshot AI Kimi founder Yang Zhilin and AgiBot co-president Xiong Yan. This was also a rare public appearance by Yang Zhilin recently. With rumors of a Hong Kong listing growing ever stronger, such a scene carries considerable meaning.
Yang Zhilin Makes Rare Appearance in Dialogue with Shen Nanpeng
Yang Zhilin was still dressed lightly: a black top and beige trousers, which seems to have become his signature outfit, a typical tech entrepreneur style. This time, he appeared at the welcome dinner of the November 2 International Financial Leaders Investment Summit, engaging in a dialogue themed "Technology for Good" with Sequoia China founding and managing partner Shen Nanpeng and AgiBot co-president Xiong Yan, exploring how artificial intelligence and robotics technology can reshape work patterns, create new business opportunities, and improve lives. It is worth noting that Sequoia China was an early investor in Moonshot AI and continued to increase its position in multiple subsequent financing rounds. During the dialogue, Yang Zhilin responded to the current heated debate over open-source versus closed-source models. Thanks to the large-scale application of recursive self-improvement in next-generation models, he expressed confidence in the ability of large models to generalize to the physical world in the future. From memory, this was one of Yang Zhilin's few public appearances recently. Over the past two years, this founder born in 1992 in Shantou, Guangdong, has been particularly low-key. The last time he appeared densely in public view was because of models. In July this year, the Kimi K3 released by Moonshot AI shocked the industry with its open-source weight form of 2.8 trillion parameters. The company claimed its overall capabilities were second only to Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT 5.6. Not long ago, Kimi K3.1 Pro also arrived: API pricing was reduced by about 33% compared to the previous generation K3, and a Highspeed version 2 to 3 times faster was simultaneously launched. External reports stated that Kimi disclosed to investors in August that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) had exceeded $1 billion. In June this year, that figure was still $300 million, and by the end of this year, its ARR is expected to break through $2 billion. Model iteration and commercialization acceleration are advancing side by side. Kimi has become one of the strongest players in the global large model arena, and its financing has been equally aggressive — according to Bloomberg reports, Kimi has completed its final pre-IPO financing round at a valuation of approximately $50 billion (over 350 billion yuan). Earlier, Investment World exclusively learned that Kimi had notified investors to adjust its corporate structure and prepare for a Hong Kong IPO, potentially listing on the Hong Kong stock market as early as the first quarter of next year. Against this backdrop, Yang Zhilin's appearance in Hong Kong inevitably invites speculation — the pace of the IPO seems to have drawn a bit closer.
Hong Kong Competes for New Money
At this moment, Hong Kong is bustling with people. Not long ago, Hong Kong had just introduced its seventh batch of key enterprises, with 18 companies officially settling in Hong Kong or expanding their Hong Kong operations. "Half from the mainland, the other half from around the world." Familiar names emerged on the list, including AgiBot, Paradigm Intelligent, 51World, Chery Automobile, and Yum China. The other protagonist in this dialogue — Xiong Yan — comes from AgiBot. AgiBot has deep ties with Hong Kong: it not only opened a Hong Kong office in Times Square in Causeway Bay, plans to invest tens of millions of yuan in Hong Kong, but will also hold campus recruitment presentations at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the University of Hong Kong, and will gradually expand its local Hong Kong team as research and development and business progress. Such a scene is also a true reflection of Hong Kong's vigorous efforts in science and innovation. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Chief Executive John Lee mentioned in his opening speech at Fintech Week: Hong Kong currently has more than 1,400 fintech companies, covering mobile payments, cross-border wealth management, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cybersecurity. At the same time, Hong Kong is building a complete innovation and technology industry chain, connecting talent, research, commercialization, and industrialization, further linking capital with global markets. More and more entrepreneurs and investors are heading to Hong Kong. In the first nine months of this year, the Hong Kong SAR government's Invest Hong Kong assisted more than 550 overseas and mainland enterprises in opening or expanding businesses in Hong Kong, a year-on-year increase of 14%, involving approximately $9 billion in foreign direct investment, creating about 11,100 jobs in the first year. "They invest in Hong Kong because they value the opportunities Hong Kong provides. In the coming decades, many important opportunities will come from our Northern Metropolis." John Lee stated that the construction of Hong Kong's Northern Metropolis will create a new dual-engine pattern of "finance in the south, innovation and technology in the north" for Hong Kong, ultimately accommodating approximately 2.5 million people and providing more than 500,000 new jobs. Connecting the mainland's thriving technology wave on one end and global long-term capital on the other, Hong Kong's wave of "grabbing people, grabbing enterprises" is surging forward. Once upon a time, a saying circulated in Hong Kong's industrial circles: "High Tech hurts, Low Tech prospers." Meaning, doing high-tech in Hong Kong tends to lose money, while doing low-tech business actually makes a fortune. Although said in jest, it fully captured the epitome of Hong Kong's past industries. Times have changed. As more and more cutting-edge technology companies are willing to place their laboratories, overseas businesses, and capital operations in Hong Kong, the industrial foundation of Victoria Harbour is being gradually rewritten. Beneath Lion Rock, the sound of waves never ceases. Old Money fades away, New Money rises.
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