Recent capital market activity has been dominated by a flurry of IPO announcements. Yushu Technology's application for listing on the STAR Market has been accepted, with its valuation reportedly targeting 42 billion yuan. Zhipu AI debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with its market capitalization briefly exceeding 320 billion yuan. On their first trading days, both Moore Threads and Muxi Shares saw their market caps surpass the 100-billion-yuan mark.
A closer examination of these companies' prospectuses and ownership structures reveals an intriguing pattern: the same name, Meituan, appears as a backer behind them all.
**A Calculated Strategic Layout**
Meituan recently released its full-year 2025 financial results, which were underwhelming. During the earnings call, CEO Wang Xing was forthright, stating that "subsidy-driven competition is a classic example of irrational competition." However, during this very year when its core business faced intense pressure from rivals, Meituan quietly accomplished something else: it built a vast investment portfolio in hard technology that would put most venture capital firms to shame.
According to incomplete statistics, Meituan has invested in at least 50 hard tech companies. Over a quarter of these have achieved unicorn status, and nearly ten are either already publicly listed or in the process of going public. Its investments span five core sectors: embodied AI, large AI models, chips and semiconductors, smart hardware, and autonomous driving. The company has supported the growth of 28 unicorns and 7 publicly listed companies. This portfolio represents more than just investments; it resembles a comprehensive map of the entire AI industry chain, from underlying computing power to top-layer applications.
**Meituan's Tech Ambitions**
To understand Meituan's hard tech investments, one must start with Wang Xing. The Meituan CEO is now jokingly referred to in industry circles as "China's primary investor in embodied AI." This title is well-earned. Meituan was a lead investor in Yushu Technology's Series B2 round when its valuation was just 1 billion yuan, and it continued to invest in subsequent B3 and C1 rounds. By the time internet giants like Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance entered the fray in mid-2025, Yushu's valuation had skyrocketed to 12 billion yuan. Essentially, while others paid a premium for defensive positions, Meituan had already been at the table for a year and a half.
This pattern of being an early investor is consistent across Meituan's portfolio. In the embodied AI sector alone, it has invested in at least 16 companies, 10 of which are now valued over $1 billion. In the chip and computing layer, its investments include companies like Moore Threads, Muxi Shares, Unisoc, Aixin Zhiyuan, and Rongxin Semiconductor, covering leading domestic GPU developers and semiconductor firms with national-level backing. In the large AI model space, Meituan is an early shareholder in Zhipu AI and made a significant investment in Moonshot AI's A1 round, while also covering niche areas like AIGC 3D and video agents.
The core logic behind Meituan's hard tech investments is straightforward: chip computing power is the foundational infrastructure, AI represents the applications, autonomous driving provides the connectivity, and embodied AI handles the execution. These four sectors form a progressive, interconnected loop that creates a complete bridge from the digital to the physical world. This investment thesis could serve as a model for many current VC/PE firms. More plainly, Meituan's business operations—food delivery, warehousing, sorting, and offline retail—are highly practical, with each segment having an urgent need for efficiency and automation. Rather than waiting to purchase mature technology, the company chooses to get involved at the R&D stage, even when the technology is still in its infancy in the lab.
**Assessing the Scale of Investment**
Based on publicly available data, Meituan's core investment布局 is extensive. The list is far from complete, including companies like Pudu Technology, Gaoxian Robotics, Future Robotics, Faaro Robotics, as well as investments in firms like Kuaishou, Shein, Waterdrop, ZhongAn Online, and Beike. Over the years, Meituan has invested across nearly every corner of the hard tech and local life services sectors.
**Widespread Success, Yet Mixed Fortunes**
A certain irony exists. The hard tech companies Meituan invested in have been going public one after another, generating substantial paper returns. However, Meituan's own core business suffered its most severe "food delivery war" in history during 2025, recording an annual loss of 23.4 billion yuan. While its tech portfolio saw batch IPOs, its main business was under heavy pressure from competitors. Furthermore, Tencent announced in January of this year that it had completely exited its strategic investment in Meituan.
This situation highlights the contradictory path Meituan is navigating: it is simultaneously engaged in a brutal, money-burning battle to defend market share in its core business while also transforming itself into one of China's most active hard tech industry investors. Wang Xing provided some insight during the 2025 earnings call, stating, "Our strategy towards AI is offensive, not defensive." In other words, the food delivery war, however painful, is a short-term challenge. The real battle Meituan is preparing for is on the future AI infrastructure of the physical world. In 2025, Meituan's R&D expenditure reached 26 billion yuan, a 23.5% year-on-year increase, with significant focus on large AI models and embodied AI. This R&D spend of 26 billion yuan exceeds the annual revenue of the majority of A-share listed companies.
**Acquiring Dingdong to Complete the Fresh Grocery Puzzle**
On February 5, 2026, Meituan made a significant move, issuing a check for 5 billion yuan to fully acquire the Chinese business of Dingdong Maicai for $717 million. This acquisition brought over 1,000 front-end warehouses, more than 7 million monthly active users, and a nearly 9-year-old direct sourcing supply chain. Crucially, Dingdong had achieved profitability for 12 consecutive quarters, demonstrating a viable business model in the notoriously difficult fresh grocery sector, often seen as a bottomless pit for cash.
It is worth noting that Meituan has had its share of missteps in the fresh grocery arena. It launched the offline Xiaoxiang Shengxian stores in 2018, but high operating costs led to their closure a year later. It later pivoted to a front-end warehouse model with Meituan Maicai, which was upgraded to Xiaoxiang Supermarket in 2023. The acquisition of Dingdong effectively allows Meituan to buy back lost time and experience. More importantly, this acquisition signals a strategic shift: while competitors are still heavily subsidizing user acquisition, Meituan has begun systematically integrating supply chains and infrastructure. The instant retail赛道 is transitioning from a phase of "who can burn more cash" to a new stage of "who can achieve greater efficiency."
**Looking Ahead to 2026**
Looking forward to 2026, several key developments warrant attention. First, the pace at which the food delivery war subsides. If the industry can return to rational competition, Meituan's core local commerce business could potentially return to profitability in the second half of 2026. Second, the monetization timeline of its portfolio companies. With Zhipu AI already public, Yushu Technology nearing its IPO, and Moore Threads and Muxi Shares having completed their listings, the returns from these exits will be significant. However, the more critical question is whether these technologies can feed back into and enhance Meituan's own operations. Currently, the Meituan AI Merchant Assistant serves over 3.4 million merchants, and the AI assistant "Xiao Tuan" served over 100 million users during the Spring Festival. Translating these technological capabilities into tangible efficiency gains and cost advantages is the ultimate goal.
Third, the potential for international expansion to become a second growth curve. The expansion of Keeta in the Middle East continues, and although short-term losses are expected, Wang Xing has been clear that the overall losses from new business segments will not exceed those of 2025.
For Meituan today, the losses of 2025 can be viewed as "tuition fees" paid for the future. While expensive—evaporating 59.2 billion yuan in profit—this tuition has purchased an investment portfolio spanning five major hard tech sectors and encompassing over 50 unicorn companies.
Is Wang Xing betting on a future that others cannot yet clearly see? The answer to that question may only become apparent in another two or three years. But one thing is already certain: while many still perceive Meituan primarily as a food delivery platform, it has quietly transformed into a significant technology investment firm.
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