Rui Ma

A lot more people are organizing China tech trips these days, which I actually think is great. More people should come see what’s happening here firsthand.

But here’s what I think makes @techbuzzchina different: deep domain expertise.

Our trips didn’t start as tours. They grew out of our work with fundamental investors who needed to meet companies face-to-face, ask detailed questions, pressure-test what they were hearing, and understand the environments in which these companies actually operate.

Today we work with a much broader group: VCs, founders, executives, and others across tech and investing. So the trips have expanded too. We might visit a factory, an R&D facility, or a robotics lab alongside closed-door company meetings. Every trip is built around what the group actually needs to learn.

But the underlying model hasn’t changed.

We’re not general business, marketing, or China consultants who moved into tech because AI, robotics, semiconductors, and other deep-tech sectors happen to be where the action is now.

I’ve worked in tech, finance, and investing for more than 20 years. I know the companies, the technologies, the investors, and the ecosystem. And because I live and work in Silicon Valley as well, I understand what people coming from overseas already know, what they think they know, and where the real knowledge gaps are.

That means we’re not just arranging access. We know who is worth meeting, what is worth seeing, what questions to ask, and how to put what you hear into context.

That’s the product.

More info below:

Nasdaq and China's STAR 50 (which tracks the 50 largest science and technology innovation companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market) both seem to be doing fine despite Nvidia's slide. Of course, that's after some major declines. STAR 50 is down almost 14% in the last month

Just went on BBC to give comments on the $NVDA situation and was asked directly about if shareholders are worried. Obviously, I can only just say that this injects a bit of uncertainty into Jensen's future leadership (I personally hope not in a big way) but anyway we need to wait for the results of the investigation.

But how bearish are yall feeling right now? I wish everyone the best!

PS However, when something like this happens and there's already some time for people to digest it for a whole day (surely Jensen's intention) it seems to me this is already the best way for the news to be "broken" (again)

Damn! Someone made this comment before me, but here it is anyway.

Zhang Linghe, the hottest actor du jour in China (gif below), actually studied electrical engineering

He's been known to show off his command of math and physics in variety shows. Of course, not saying that he's a genius, but since in China you have to test into each major, it's not something you "pick." He does have the basic math and physics knowledge to show for it

I've had various conversations with folks who do AI initiatives in larger companies in the past month, and my impression is that they're not addicted to frontier models. In fact, the problem for them does seem to be business context: gathering it, organizing it, and then training it.

However, I was talking to another company that services small businesses, and they told me that their clients are really picky about getting frontier models.

I guess when you have very little complexity, frontier models can just one-shot or few-shot everything.

But if you actually have a large, sprawling, complex business, then organizing each piece and putting it together is all being done by a very technical team anyway, and they're much more picky, building it piece by piece.