Feng Zhao

Dr. Feng Zhao is a technologist-turned-investor whose career spans academia, industrial research, and corporate R&D leadership before he moved into venture capital. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from MIT and subsequently taught at Stanford University and Ohio State University. He is widely recognized as an early pioneer of the Internet of Things (IoT), having developed fundamental technologies in the field, and has authored or co-authored more than 100 technical papers and books and holds over 40 issued US patents.

In industry, Zhao was Principal Researcher and Partner at Microsoft Research in Redmond before becoming Deputy Managing Director of Microsoft Research Asia, where he led teams building mobile and cloud solutions that fed into Microsoft's product groups. He later served as Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Haier, running the Chinese appliance giant's R&D efforts and its global smart-home strategy.

Zhao joined Eight Roads Ventures in July 2020 as a Venture Partner based in the firm's Beijing office, brought on to strengthen its global enterprise-technology capabilities and to help build out an early-stage frontier-tech investment framework for the China Technology Fund. In October 2023, Eight Roads China promoted him to Partner, tasking him with overseeing the firm's early-stage frontier technology investments and leading its frontier-tech team. Public records indicate his tenure as a Partner ran through roughly 2024.

• Invests at the early stage (seed through Series Pre-A/A) in China, using a deep thematic, technology-led approach.
• Core sectors: next-generation semiconductors, IoT, and enterprise/frontier software technologies.
• Frames his thesis around hard tech solving real-world problems: *"Ground-breaking hardware and software solutions are increasingly at the core of meeting societal needs and addressing global challenges."*
• On data/AI, he sees a timing inflection: *"We believe data intelligence products and services for business is at an inflection point due to the recent rapid advances in data processing and NLP technologies."*
• Backed by his deep technical/research pedigree (MIT, Microsoft Research, Haier), he leans toward founders building genuinely differentiated core technology rather than incremental applications.