Investors
1 Curated Dialogues
庄明浩
Key Views & Dialogues
The Underwater Private-Market World: From SpaceX to ByteDance Secondary Shares
Blocked exits have pushed private secondary trading into a quasi-market with buyers, sellers, prices and intermediaries, while 5,000-plus 36Kr entries show leadership rotating from internet and consumer names to Web3, hard tech, AI, robotics and commercial space. Layered SPVs and Web3 infrastructure cut SpaceX access to $5,000, but restrictions on Chinese nationals investing in US AI companies, fragile transaction chains and ByteDance’s uncertain listing path remain central risks.
View summary (8)
- 庄明浩给一级半市场的定义直指其成因：一级市场基金“到期一定要结账”，但滴滴事件后美股上市基本停滞、港股低迷、A股一度堵塞，退出环境没有给大家到期结账的空间，于是老股交易从水下江湖被逼成一个有买方、卖方、标的价格和层层中间方的准市场。 The same trend has emerged in China and the US over the past few years, and it is moving toward formalization and tighter oversight.
- The US private-company market has formed a “real Magnificent Seven”: SpaceX, OpenAI, xAI, Anduril, Databricks, Anthropic and Stripe, representing the three dominant consensus themes of AI, defense and chips. Raymond says SpaceX is already a $1.8T company and expects OpenAI and Anthropic to reach valuations above $1T when they go public; even Stripe, ranked last, has “so much momentum that it can hold a conference alongside AWS, Google Cloud or even Nvidia,” and has just acquired OpenRouter.
- SpaceX went from a deal available only to VCs willing to commit tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars to an investment accessible for $5,000, enabled by layered SPVs and financial infrastructure left behind by Web3 — “putting the hype aside, Web3 did help.” Dollar capital with Chinese links is participating in SpaceX and Neuralink through layers of SPVs; buyers “don’t know whether they are touching the second layer or the seventh,” but once a deal closes, they can claim, “I’m already an investor in it.” Raymond says Chinese nationals cannot invest in US AI companies under the current US regulatory framework, yet these structures continue to appear.
- On pricing high-growth assets, Raymond asked how much weight formal factors carry relative to fundamentals, and 庄明浩 answered that “the vast majority is being assigned to formal factors.” When Zhipu secondary-share SPVs appeared at the end of last year, they were still using 2024 financial data, with revenue “roughly equivalent to zero,” yet trading at RMB16B–18B valuations. The rules are “willing buyer, willing seller; you take the bet, you live with the outcome,” and “when the rocket is about to launch, don’t worry about your seat.” For stagnant assets such as Canva and Discord, however, the information set is “already not much different from a prospectus,” bringing the decision back to traditional investment craft.
- ByteDance is the world’s singular private-secondary asset: it appeared more than 500 times across 180-plus 36Kr message-board issues over 5 years, almost every issue; its annual employee-share buyback price creates self-reinforcing price discovery, and it has the cash and willingness to buy back secondary shares into its own Cap Table, functioning as a liquidity pool. 庄明浩 thinks ByteDance cannot go public in the short term, while Raymond sees it as a market-proof company: “ByteDance itself may be bigger than Hong Kong; wherever ByteDance goes, it will lift that market,” and the capex required for the AI war demands the financing tools available to public companies.
- More than 5,000 pieces of information on the 36Kr message board over 5 years form a statistically meaningful sample of China’s private-secondary market: Raymond notes that 87% were sell orders in 2021, while 57% are buy orders this year, with the market rotating from internet and consumer assets to Web3, hard tech and AI, then to robotics and commercial space — a “leading indicator of sector heat.” But the board is only a message board, not a trading venue: “the distance from displaying and listing information to an actual closing is enormous,” which is also why Chinese technology media have struggled to make FA businesses work in practice.
- SHEIN is set to list in a few days, becoming the most sobering case: its peak valuation was $98B, versus a $26B valuation in its IPO prospectus. Raymond asks why capital-markets execution reached this point when almost no company matches SHEIN in Chinese supply-chain management. 庄明浩’s answer is that individual actors — investors, banks, founders and others — may all have offered seemingly rational advice, but “something went wrong in the group decision,” while timing, external conditions and luck still exert enormous influence over an IPO.
- One overlooked opportunity: the message board carried 321 “sell-the-company” notices seeking acquisitions in 2024, a figure that fell sharply in 2025, which 庄明浩 attributes to more companies being able to pursue Hong Kong listings. The biggest obstacle to Chinese M&A is a generation of founders who “never leave the office,” but those 321 owners willing to step away are worth systematic screening. Raymond’s verdict: “This could make a lot of money.”