Dialogue with Circle Investor Lei Ming: Behind the projects that have won consecutive high-return returns, we strive to continue to capture the Times Beta

Author: Stone Jin, IPO has known it

On the evening of June 5, 2025, Beijing time, Circle Internet Group (hereinafter referred to as "Circle") was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock code "CRCL", becoming the "first stablecoin stock in the world".

Two trading days later, Circle's stock price has risen by 247.42% from the issue price, with a market value of approximately US$24 billion. In fact, in this IPO issuance, Circle has raised the number of shares issued and the issue price many times, eventually raising US$1.1 billion and received oversubscriptions of more than 25 times.

Behind this most talked-about large-scale IPO so far in 2025, there are many investors with Chinese backgrounds. Among them, Lei Ming, who was then an investor in Huaxing New Economic Fund, invested in Circle in 2018 . With the listing of Circle, these early investors also gained high investment returns.

Lei Ming said that his two core investment judgments on Circle were: First, blockchain technology can create very large commercial and social value in the future; second, investment is to invest in the essence. The essence of finance is license ability, and Circle was the one with the most complete license at that time.

In addition, Lei Ming pointed out that blockchain is a very big era in 2017-2018. If you want the fund to perform well, you must seize the biggest era of Beta in the investment period. In addition to Circle, Lei Ming seized the opportunity of the times at that time, including NIO in the new energy vehicle field, as well as Dewu and Pop Mart, which are popular among the post-95s, thus maintaining an extremely high investment success rate.

Of course, the biggest beta in this era is undoubtedly AI, robots and globalization, which has almost become a consensus.

In mid-2023, Lei Ming, as the founding partner, founded Zhui Chuang Venture Capital and began to establish Zhui Mi Ecological Fund .

At present, Zhuchuang Venture Capital has invested in many companies, including the embossed intelligent company "Magic Atom", the swimming pool robot company "Surge Future", the embossed large-scale model company "Qianjue Technology", the consumer-grade 3D printer company "Atomic Reshaping", and the intelligent short-distance travel company "Tantu Technology".

Universal humanoid robot and four-legged robot products of magic atoms

Lei Ming emphasized that the core competitiveness of Zhuimu Ecological Fund comes from the empowerment of Zhuimu Incubation Ecological: on the one hand, Zhuimu Chuang can prioritize investing in Zhuimu Ecological Incubation projects with the best valuation to ensure the stability and high growth potential of the project; on the other hand, relying on Zhuimu Ecological Industry Insight, the fund can also expand investment in external high-quality projects and achieve ecological collaboration.

According to Lei Ming, he and his team are now raising US dollar funds and continue to emphasize the concept of "China to Global" to the US dollar LP, that is, to make good use of China's comprehensive capabilities in various fields and to believe that Chinese people have the ability to "make achievements" globally.

Here we might as well add that in August 2024, Jockey Venture Capital announced the establishment of the industrial venture capital fund and completed the first level of a RMB fund. It is reported that in half a year, the fund has achieved oversubsidy, with a MOIC of 2.5 times, and 100% of the projects in the fund have achieved at least doubled valuations.

Lei Ming said, "The next important direction is to invest in globalization -we stand from the perspective of a Chinese team, and instead recruit some overseas teams in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, gradually improve our capabilities in this area, and truly achieve 'China to Global'."

When Circle officially landed on the New York Stock Exchange, Lei Ming shared with "IPO Early Knows" (WeChat official account) his core logic of investing in Circle 7 years ago and some thoughts and prospects after founding Invest in Circle Investors.

The following is a selection of conversations between Lei Ming and "IPO Early Know" (WeChat Official Account):

Investing is about investing in essence

Q: You voted for Circle 7 years ago. What was the logic of judgment at that time?

Lei Ming: I just joined Huaxing in 2018, and blockchain was one of the tracks I covered at that time. I myself still quite agree with the underlying logic of blockchain, and I also believe that blockchain technology can create very large commercial and social value in the future. But frankly speaking, blockchain was still in its early stages of development at that time, and many laws and regulations were unclear, so we tried our best to choose some projects that we believed were compliant and risk control allowed to invest. After all, we still need to consider listing and exiting in the future.

Q: It should be a bit unexpected for Circle to reach its market value of more than 20 billion US dollars today.

Lei Ming: To be honest, it has a certain luck component - at that time, Circle's main business was not stablecoins, and they had just started doing this business. In addition, when Circle's IPO was issued, the United States and Hong Kong successively introduced bills on stablecoins, which directly led to the very successful issuance of Circle. Of course, its future potential is also very great, and these were not available 7 years ago.

But at that time we had a basic judgment, and it was also our consensus that finance was essentially a licensed business. When a new thing comes out, supervision may not be in place, and anyone who is growing up may make some achievements; but in the long run, the financial industry will definitely be increasingly compliant and must be operated in compliance with regulatory conditions, so license capacity becomes particularly critical. This is what we were very sure at the time. Circle is the one with the most complete licenses.

Q: Circle is relatively niche, at least for traditional investment institutions. From this project, have you summarized some experiences that can be reused in the subsequent investment process?

Lei Ming: I roughly summarize it into four points:

First of all, when we make investments, we should try our best to embrace the opportunities brought by new technologies . I should be the first wave of investing in blockchain in traditional financial institutions. So when these transformative technologies come, we need to keep a long-term focus and follow-up, and constantly learn new things and study new directions.

Secondly, even if you see something new in a certain industry, you still have to return to the underlying logic. The core of investment is ultimately the essence of investment. As I just said, the success of the Circle case is due to our understanding and grasping the essence of the financial industry.

Third, the perspective of globalization. There were not so many peers who were "globalized" in the past seven years ago, but when I talked with the founder of Circle, I felt that he had a global mindset. If a company wants to truly win, it must embrace globalization and multi-faceted globalization, including globalization of funds, globalization of markets, globalization of supply chains, globalization of talents, etc. I think that my firm optimism about globalization is also a major factor in the success of this case.

Finally, we must vote for founders with faith and belief. When a new thing appears, there will definitely be a lot of changes, and the market will be quite impetuous. At this time, you must invest in founders who are very confident and have great faith in what they do in this track . If the founder lacks faith and changes frequently, he is likely to be unable to build an excellent company.

Seize the opportunity of the times as much as possible

Q: You mentioned before that "fund performance essentially depends on whether you can capture the largest era Beta in the investment period." The NIO you invested in at that time can be said to be one of the greatest opportunities in the era, but can Circle be called it? How to find projects outside of these opportunities in the big era?

Lei Ming: I don’t think so. I think blockchain can also be said to be a very large beta from 2017 to 2018.

Blockchain is a very big track, and there are still many applications that have not yet emerged. In fact, blockchain technology can potentially be applied in many fields.

Q: When I invest in 2020, do I also think it was the Time Beta?

Lei Ming: The biggest beta of Dewu is: At that time, we conducted a survey on the post-95s population, and judged that the opportunity in that era was an investment opportunity targeting the post-95s population.

My logic at that time was that if I wanted to seize the opportunity of great changes in the times, to put it simply, it was nothing more than "people, goods, and places", among which the variable "people" is definitely the largest . So we did an in-depth research on the "Generation Z" at that time. I led my team to 8 cities, covering different cities in the first, second, third, fourth and fifth tiers. After we studied this generation, we screened out a series of investment themes based on the generation born in the 1995s. Therefore, we still invested in Dewu when the valuation is relatively low. Today, Dewu's size and influence are already very large.

When we invested in Dewu, the wave of mobile Internet has gradually subsided, and there are very few companies like Dewu that will come out after 2018.

Overall, I think we should try our best to find the opportunities of those larger times Beta. It may not be the biggest, but there are still some larger investment themes, such as blockchain and post-95 people.

Q: The opportunity in the current era is AI, robotics and globalization.

Lei Ming: In fact, this is also the core of our pursuit of innovation today. The biggest opportunity for the next era is to focus on AI, robots and globalization.

In other words, truly valuable projects and projects that allow investors to make money are actually those projects that can significantly improve social productivity and significantly improve production efficiency through technological innovation. For example, AI and robots are driving the improvement of human productivity, so this is the greatest opportunity for the times.

Positioning Zhumi Ecological Fund pursues "China to Global"

Q: Today almost all institutions are emphasizing their investment in AI, robots, and globalization. As a new institution that has just been established for more than 2 years, how can you ensure that you can gain a foothold in the market and even continue to lead?

Lei Ming: Our positioning is Zhuimi Ecological Fund, so a relatively large advantage lies in Zhuimi 's deep industrial accumulation and a complete innovation incubation system . In the past few years, Zhuimi has accumulated systematic capabilities and entrepreneurial methodologies by successfully creating those mature categories. We can find opportunities across industries and regions across the world, especially some opportunities related to robots, based on this system and methodology, and then conduct corresponding incubation.

What I want to emphasize here is that I have fully felt that the organizational management model and organizational management methodology established by Zhuimi are ahead of the current era . The external perception may not be so strong, and it may take some time to slowly experience it. We will open these systematic capabilities to our incubation companies.

In fact, we have incubated many projects recently - on the one hand, we can invest in the projects in Zhuimi Ecological Incubation with the lowest valuation as soon as possible; on the other hand, these projects currently have a much higher success rate than those outside. The growth curves of several projects are models of revenue of 300 million to 500 million in the first year and 1 billion in the second year. All projects strive to make product performance the world's first, and achieve profitability in the first year without spending money. This is what we emphasize internally.

Therefore, these projects are very stable, and they can achieve very fast growth based on the global channels that Zhuimi has built, and their growth is quite considerable.

With the perspective of Zhumi 's entire ecosystem, we can also extend the projects other than Zhumi's incubation . For example, we can invest in some upstream projects, and at this time we can consult Zhuimi’s business team. For example, “Will they use these upstream technical platforms” is a relatively accurate and intuitive judgment dimension.

In addition, we can also use Zhuimi 's global perspective to invest in global projects. We have reserved some projects in Silicon Valley, projects in the UK, etc. On the one hand, our fund has a team overseas and can take the initiative to find projects. On the other hand, we can also recommend the projects they see through Zhuimi's sales team.

We are also raising USD funds now, but raising USD today is not the same as in the past - the logic of fundraising in the past is that USD investors are very optimistic about China's economy and are basically all in China. Just hand over the money to China's top GPs and let them invest.

There may be some changes in the external environment today, so we have been emphasizing the concept of "China to Global" with the US dollar LP, that is, to make good use of China's various capabilities, including supply chain capabilities, engineer R&D capabilities, operation capabilities, etc., to achieve a global layout.

Fund returns and ecological collaboration can be realized together

Q: Positioning an ecological fund, how do you view the priority of financial returns and ecological coordination?

Lei Ming: From the perspective of funds, we must be the first-oriented approach to financial returns .

Ecological collaboration is actually a natural thing. For example, in the process of raising funds for Zhuchuang RMB funds, we and our business team have a cooperative relationship - because the places where each project is suitable for implementation may be different. The business team will comprehensively consider factors such as supply chain supporting, labor costs, and transportation convenience to select several places that are most suitable for implementation, and then we will talk about the establishment of funds with these places that are suitable for implementation of enterprises.

If we raise funds first and then force the business team to cooperate with the landing return investment, this model will not last long. In essence, the two parties have a win-win relationship, and we will also help the company strive for some better investment policies.

In general, we decide which incubation project our fund should invest in, what stage to invest, and what valuation to invest in, these are all decided by ourselves. The core starting point here is to maximize the returns of the fund and allow LPs to make money while minimizing risks. At the same time, the business team can also achieve some good results, so this is natural.

Fund returns and ecological coordination are not contradictory and can be realized together.

Q: You have achieved a good return on investment multiple in the past two years. What aspects do you think Zhuchuang has done well? What other areas can be iterated and improved next?

Lei Ming: The relatively good achievements we have achieved in the past two years are ultimately attributed to Zhuimi’s incubation model, entrepreneurial methodology and reusable organizational management incentive system . The success rate of these incubation projects is naturally relatively high, which is obvious.

On this basis, we have also invested in some good companies along the upstream of the industry, whether it is parts or underlying algorithms.

Next, a very important direction for our self-iteration is to invest in globalization - we stand from the perspective of a Chinese team, and instead recruit some overseas teams in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, gradually improve our abilities in this area, and truly achieve "China to Global".