Gaonan Zhang

Gaonan Zhang is a Managing Partner at Meridian Capital, a venture capital firm founded in Singapore in 2008 and focused on technology innovation. Meridian says it manages more than US$1.5 billion and usually leads Series A and B rounds while also investing across early, mid-to-late, and M&A opportunities.

Zhang holds a Ph.D. in wireless communication from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Before joining Meridian, he built a technical and operating career in mobile communications and internet infrastructure, including roles as Software Manager at Motorola’s Asia R&D center, VP of Longcheer’s mobile terminal division, and head of Yahoo’s global mobile web-gateway platform. Meridian also notes that he obtained multiple technology patents during his operating career.

He joined Meridian Capital around 2014. At Meridian, he became responsible for technology-related investments and helped move the firm from its earlier strengths in mobile internet, culture, and consumer investing into enterprise technology, intelligent manufacturing, and hard technology. The Paper reported that he first proposed Meridian’s intelligent-manufacturing direction at the firm’s 2017 annual meeting, when the move away from internet investing was still debated internally.

His known investments include BOSS Zhipin, Biren Technology, ELS Technology / Qiqitong, Origin Quantum, BeagleData, Tianyun Data, Yelink, Gizwits, 3Dnest, Shimo.im, SEAWAY, and AINSTEC. In recent interviews, he has emphasized a methodical technology-investing style centered on market expansion, defensibility, and category leadership rather than chasing hot themes.

• Zhang summarizes his own investment logic as “incremental market, top three, extremely high barriers.” He has defined an incremental market as one with at least RMB 200 million in current market size and the possibility of 10x growth over five years.
• He focuses on markets that are not yet fully consensus but could become large. In 2025, he said his own method is to invest in uncertain, under-consensus future trends where there are few players, high barriers, and preferably no more than ten competitors.
• In intelligent manufacturing, he separates opportunities into two dimensions: “intelligence,” meaning digital and information technologies that improve manufacturing efficiency, and “manufacturing,” meaning process innovation in materials, materials processing, and equipment.
• He looks for hard-to-copy process innovation that can reach mass production. In The Paper interview, he argued that before mass production, a process innovation’s commercial value can be zero, but after mass production it can create a large competitive advantage.
• His sector focus has expanded from enterprise software and industrial digitalization into advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, AI infrastructure, energy structure upgrades, battery and EV supply chains, storage, controllable fusion, silicon photonics, quantum computing, and other frontier technologies.
• For internationalization, he favors companies that comply with international rules while maintaining strong proprietary innovation. In a 2025 36Kr/Sina discussion, he said this “B-type” company has the biggest opportunity to bring Chinese innovation to global markets.