China’s Top VC Firm Qiming Plans Leadership Transition

Qiming Venture Partners, one of China’s leading venture firms, is planning a major leadership transition, one of the first of a generation of Chinese VC firms to take this step, according to three people with knowledge of the plan.

Nisa Leung and Duane Kuang, two of Qiming’s managing partners, will gradually step back from their roles to let younger partners take center stage, according to the people. The plan comes as Qiming is preparing to start raising a new U.S.-dollar venture fund next year, with a target size of $800 million to $1 billion, two of the people said.

Qiming, co-founded in 2006 by Kuang and Gary Rieschel, two Cisco Systems alum, is one of China’s most successful VC firms, with investments in smartphone maker Xiaomi, food delivery platform Meituan and video-streaming app Bilibili. Over the past decade, it has also built a speciality in backing biotech and healthcare startups. The firm now has $9.5 billion under management.

The upcoming management handoff, paramount to ensure VC firms can seamlessly attract capital and start-up founders as their original partners ready to retire, is something that U.S. VC firms have been navigating. But it’s a newer challenge for Chinese VC firms, since many were founded in the  2000s, when the country’s economy started to integrate with the West.

And right now Chinese VC firms are being hammered by the double whammy of a domestic economic slowdown and rising geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington. That’s reflected in the target size of Qiming’s new fund, which is much smaller than the $2.5 billion raised across two funds in Qiming’s last fundraising in 2022.

“A smooth leadership transition requires not only time but also patience and strategic foresight,” Qiming said in a statement. “With this in mind, we have formulated a management succession plan for the next decade, with a view to building a business in the venture capital industry that will last for more than a century.”

As part of the transition, Leung, one of China’s top healthcare investors, will become an advisor after overseeing the deployment of the current funds, the people said. Kuang, who was the director of Intel Capital China and held various management positions at Cisco before founding Qiming, will continue to lead the firm through the raising and allocation of the next fund, and plans to step back after that, they added.

Rieschel, the other founding managing partner, has already stepped back from his previous role. Last year, Rieschel said he was no longer involved in Qiming’s day-to-day operations or investment decisions.

The new leadership of Qiming will comprise William Hu, Alex Zhou and Kan Chen, all of them currently in their 40s, according to the people. Hu and Chen will co-lead healthcare deals while Zhou will oversee technology and consumer sectors.

Apart from Qiming, another Chinese firm, ZhenFund, recently went through a similar transition as co-founder Bob Xu passed on its day-to-day leadership to CEO Anna Fang last year.