Primavera Capital Holds 2026 Global Investment Conference

Primavera Capital held its 2026 Global Investment Conference in Hong Kong on 23-24 September, bringing together more than 200 government and business leaders, senior investment executives, and leading entrepreneurs across the world. Discussions explored how geopolitical shifts and industrial transformation are reshaping the global economy, and where long-term investors can find opportunities amid increasingly uneven growth.

From the global and Chinese economic outlook to trade, AI, industrial development, and the energy transition, a central question connected the discussions: how to distinguish lasting structural changes from short-term fluctuations and identify opportunities that patient capital can help realize.

Hong Kong’s resurgent capital market activities and renewed appeal to global investors provided a fitting backdrop. Paul Chan, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong SAR; Bonnie Chan, CEO of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX); and Clara Chan, CEO of Hong Kong Investment Corporation (HKIC) each spoke to how innovation, industry, and global capital can be better connected, from the vantage points of economic development, capital markets, and long-term investment. Their remarks captured the city’s “Lion Rock Spirit” of resilience and determination, setting the tone for the conference around the importance of pursuing new opportunities and competitive strengths amid a changing world.

 

China’s Economic Rebalancing and its Global Implications

China’s economic resilience and its structural challenges were central to the macroeconomic discussion. A panel moderated by Prof. Ning Zhu, Senior Macro Strategist at Primavera Capital, brought together Dr. Tao Wang, Managing Director and Senior Advisor at UBS Global Research; Andrew Tilton, Chief Asia-Pacific Economist and Head of Emerging Markets Economic Research at Goldman Sachs; and Shaun Rein, Founder and Managing Director of China Market Research Group.

The discussion covered the property sector adjustment, domestic consumption and policy choices, as well as China’s trade surplus and the renminbi exchange rate. The panel agreed that China’s manufacturing capabilities, supply chains and technological competitiveness continue to strengthen. This, however, contrasts with the continued subdued domestic demand, causing a larger gap between supply and demand, increasingly spilling across borders through trade. Reviving consumption, improving corporate profitability and strengthening expectations for income growth therefore have implications beyond China’s own growth, which also shape its economic relationships with the rest of the world.

In a fireside chat with Dr. Fred Hu, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Primavera Capital, Nobel laureate Prof. Michael Spence explored China’s changing role in global manufacturing and trade. In manufacturing, he observed that China and many other economies are moving away from complementary roles towards more direct competition, and China is not the only one that needs to adapt. In fact, economies worldwide are restructuring supply chains, rethinking industrial policy, and redirecting capital to strengthen security and resilience. Globalization is not disappearing but increasingly take the form of overseas investment, local production, and more complex cross-border cooperation. The discussion underscored a shared challenge for all nations to preserve room for the limited but necessary cooperation, even as competition intensifies

 

Beyond the AI Race: Bringing Innovation into Everyday Use

Against the backdrop of geopolitical fragmentation, competition in AI is intensifying. Yet the same technology is also creating new connections and opportunities for wider participation.

Prof. Spence framed the AI contest along two dimensions: innovation, which pushes the technological frontier; and diffusion, which brings those advances into use across businesses and the wider economy. “Slowing down is not an option,” he said when discussing the AI arms race, while pointing out that breakthroughs by a few leading players are not enough. Their economic impact ultimately depends on widespread adoption and productivity gains. China’s efforts to broaden AI adoption could become a key driver of future competitiveness.

Two panels on AI examined these opportunities from different perspectives.

In a discussion moderated by Guangyu Li, Primavera’s AI Investment Lead, entrepreneurs considered how to deliver capable AI at lower cost, moving beyond the debate over model size. Speakers included Fu Zhi, Founder of Gongji Technology; Dr. Ji Yu, Founder of Beijing Xingyun Integrated Circuit; Dahai Li, CEO of ModelBest; and Zhang Xiaoheng, Vice President of Sudo AI. The discussion moved beyond debates about model scale to a more practical question: how to deliver capable AI at lower cost. Across approaches ranging from improved compute density and scheduling efficiency to small models, edge AI, and embodied intelligence, cost, reliability and suitability for real-world applications are increasingly critical to deploying AI at scale. The next phase of AI growth will place greater emphasis on lowering barriers to deployment.

A separate frontier-AI panel explored how AI can understand biology and the physical world, extending beyond models built around human language. Moderated by Johnny Zou, Managing Director at Primavera Capital, the discussion featured Kai Liu, Founder and CEO of Anew Therapeutics; Dr. Le Song, Co-Founder and CTO of GenBio AI; Simon Song, Founder and CEO of VAST; and Dr. Jie Fan, Founder and CEO of Accutar Bio. The panelists saw large language models as opening the era of artificial general intelligence (AGI), but not as the only way for AI to understand the world. There is much more to explore beyond human language: biology has its own complex “languages”, molecular models seek to describe the microscopic world, and 3D models help AI understand physical space. Together, these approaches are taking AI beyond text and image generation and making it a partner in scientific discovery and exploration.

 

Turning Industrial Strength into Sustainable Returns

As AI moves into the physical world and transforms industries, the determinants of competitive advantage are shifting with it.

A panel moderated by Jiaqi Zheng, Partner of Primavera Capital, examined a central challenge for China’s frontier industries: translating technological, engineering and scale advantages into sustainable returns for individual companies amid intense competition. The panel brought together Dr. Weiping Huang, Founder of Ligent; Oscar Luo, Executive President, Global Head of BD, Licensing & Venture Management of CATL; Dr. James Peng, Founder and CEO of Pony.ai; and Dr. Hepeng Shi, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Avistone. Their discussion explored why industry leadership does not necessarily translate into strong company-level profitability.

The panelists noted that scale alone does not generate sustained high margins. As technologies mature and more competitors enter, capabilities that were once scarce could become standard rapidly, compressing profits. Value then shifts towards unresolved technical challenges, critical parts of the value chain and the ability to commercialize innovation.

For companies, the challenge is not simply to grow bigger, but to keep developing differentiated capabilities and defensible advantages as their industries expand, ultimately capturing the profits and returns generated by their technological and engineering strengths.

As AI models and computing capacity expand, new constraints are emerging in the physical infrastructure supporting them. “One end of a GPU takes in electricity; the other outputs intelligence.” This idea framed a conversation between Lei Zhang, Founder and CEO of Envision, and William Wang, Founding Partner of Primavera Capital, on the energy systems underpinning AI.

The discussion highlighted a mismatch in development cycles. AI models may iterate within months and chips within years, while power grids and large-scale energy infrastructure take much longer to build. Traditional grids were not designed for the AI era.

As data centers scale toward hundreds of megawatts and into the gigawatt range, clean energy, storage, power grids and computing infrastructure are becoming increasingly interdependent. The AI race now extends beyond models and chips to the entire physical infrastructure needed to sustain them.

 

Investing for the Long Term

Across discussions of China’s economic rebalancing, AI innovation and adoption, industrial competitiveness and energy infrastructure, a common investment perspective emerged: structural opportunities remain but identifying them in a fragmenting global economy requires increasingly discerning judgement.

Recognizing those opportunities requires looking past short-term noise and focusing on long-term trends. To do this, it demands the connectivity to operate globally and sustained collaboration between patient capital and entrepreneurs, from early innovation through to operations and ecosystem building, to build lasting edges amid uncertainty.

Uneven growth brings challenges, but also opportunities for those prepared to invest with conviction and patience. Primavera Capital extends its sincere appreciation to all investors, partners, and portfolio companies for joining this year’s conference and looks forward to continuing to support innovation, create long-term value and foster new growth.