Hao Xiong

Hao Xiong is a partner-level investor at Sinovation Ventures (创新工场), the early-stage venture firm founded by Kai-Fu Lee. He serves as Executive Director and General Manager of the firm's South China region, where he is responsible for building Sinovation's pipeline, leading the regional team, and growing the firm's footprint and influence in the south of the country. At Sinovation he concentrates on technology, advanced manufacturing, and logistics & supply-chain opportunities, while also remaining active in consumer-upgrade and online-education themes.

He brings an unusual combination of deep technical training and finance credentials. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University (1999), a Ph.D. in Electronic/Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University (2004), and an MBA from the Yale School of Management (2010). Before moving into investing, he worked in R&D in the electronics and semiconductor fields, including an engineering/research role associated with NIST (the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology).

Prior to Sinovation Ventures, Xiong built his venture-capital career at two well-known Chinese firms: Legend Capital (君联资本), where he was a Vice President, and Cowin Capital / Tongchuang Weiye (同创伟业创投), where he was a Vice Investment Director. Across those roles he focused on TMT and innovative-consumer investing and led or participated in investments in dozens of companies spanning online education, sports, smart hardware, technology, and "internet + traditional industry" plays.

His investing worldview blends a researcher's curiosity with operational pragmatism. In a 2018 interview he argued that successful investors need three traits — curiosity, an academic foundation, and the ability to learn quickly — and compared today's China to late-1970s Japan, a moment when rising domestic consumer brands create openings across quality upgrades, service/new-retail models, curated channels, and supply-chain innovation.

• Invests across early to growth stages (seed/angel, pre-A, A, B, C), with check sizes roughly RMB 0.5M–50M+.
• Core sectors today: technology, advanced manufacturing, logistics & supply chain, and semiconductors, alongside continued interest in consumer upgrade/new retail, B2B/enterprise services, AI & big data, smart hardware, and online education.
• Favors teams that pair real operational expertise with technology rather than purely technical founders chasing an operations-heavy market: "Retail is retail, consumption is consumption. Although technology offers major improvements, you must still excel at product selection, site selection, and customer acquisition — this is comprehensive work."
• On new retail / consumer, he frames the opportunity around four vectors: quality upgrades (premium/customization), service improvements (omnichannel new-retail models), channel evolution (curated platforms sourcing quality suppliers at fair prices), and supply-chain innovation (flexible and reverse logistics).
• His message to operators in saturated markets: don't concede defeat — "actively embrace AI and technology to drive transformation."