Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau "Super Mother Fund," the first investment has been made!

The national venture capital investment guidance fund has landed, bringing yet another new development.

A Securities Times reporter learned at a policy briefing meeting of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area venture capital investment guidance fund (abbreviated as the “Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund”). As one of the regionally focused funds under a national-level super fund-of-funds, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund currently has 15 subsidiary funds that have already been approved and initiated due diligence. The total fund size is about RMB 8.6 billion. In addition, 8 direct investment projects have completed their investment decisions. The cumulative investment amount of subsidiary funds plus direct investment has exceeded RMB 2.7 billion.

The reporter also learned that multiple VC/PE institutions in Guangzhou and Shenzhen are actively docking and applying. The fund sizes they plan to establish are mostly in the range of RMB 300 million to RMB 500 million. All of them target emerging industry tracks such as artificial intelligence and biopharmaceuticals. As the first national-level fund-of-funds administered by Guangdong Province, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund is expected to leverage more than RMB 140 billion in social capital. A huge new pool of “fresh capital” is already in place, but in order to address the problem of “big funds finding it hard to invest in small projects,” the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund is taking the lead in exploring a “sample solution.”

Leading the three regional funds, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund’s first investment has already been in place

On December 26, 2025, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund, along with two regional sub-funds for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and the Yangtze River Delta, simultaneously announced their establishment, together forming the national layout of the National Venture Capital Investment Guidance Fund. According to Huofeng Huo, Chairman of the National Venture Capital Investment Guidance Fund, the first batch of the three regional funds—Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao—has achieved “four fulls”: all have completed the establishment of fund sizes of at least RMB 50 billion; the first batch of 40% of capital has been fully paid in; completed registration with AMAC; and fully entered investment operations.

Among the three regional funds, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund is the earliest to achieve the nationally approved fund size, the earliest to complete full capital contribution for the first tranche, and the earliest to realize the deployment of project funding. The fund is managed by Shenzhen Capital Group (Shenchuangtou), with a total size of RMB 50.45 billion, and the first tranche paid-in capital of RMB 20.1 billion, with all funds already in place.

Zhang Hu, Executive Vice Governor of Guangdong Province, disclosed the latest investment progress of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund: on the fund-of-funds side, 15 subsidiary funds with a total size of about RMB 8.6 billion have already been approved and have initiated due diligence; on the direct investment side, 8 direct investment projects have completed their investment decisions. The cumulative investment amount of subsidiary funds plus direct investment has exceeded RMB 2.7 billion.

Zhang Hu also said that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund is coordinating and landing with Guangdong Province’s strategic emerging industry investment guidance fund with a scale of RMB 100 billion, demonstrating Guangdong’s efforts to support industrial innovation with science and technology finance and to promote the transformation of成果. “We will place more emphasis on platforms, projects, talent, and capital into enterprises, and build and share an innovation and venture capital ecosystem.”

Unlike traditional guidance funds, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund is characterized by an ultra-long investment cycle, investing early, investing small, and investing in hard science and technology. Industry insiders view it as a benchmark for patient capital. Chen Wei, Chairman of Orient Fund Management, also commented that in China, the life cycle of national-level funds can reach 20 years; this is the first time they have been implemented alongside long-term capital from the United States for direct comparison. In the past, domestic funds generally only had 3 to 7 years, and truly requires long-term, usable capital support for technological innovation. “In the future, leader companies and entrepreneurs like Tencent and Musk are very likely to come from these innovation enterprises that are supported by long-term capital. The market not only needs money, but also needs long-term money and money that actually works.”

Multiple VC institutions have already applied; solving “pressure to spend” has become a key issue

In terms of investment strategy specifically, Zuoding Zuo, Chairman of Shenchuangtou, introduced that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund adopts a structure of “80% investing in subsidiary funds + 20% direct investment.” It is expected to form a group of subsidiary funds with a combined size of over RMB 130 billion and direct investment projects of RMB 10 billion, totaling to leveraging social capital of more than RMB 140 billion, helping the Greater Bay Area build a trillion-yuan-level strategic emerging industry and future industry cluster.

Under specific rules, this “super national team” is clear in its orientation: the maximum fund life is 20 years, with 16 years as an investment and incubation period, during which two separate extensions of 2 years each can be made; 70% of the funds of subsidiary funds will be directed to seed-stage and start-up-stage projects; for any single subsidiary fund, 60% of its size needs to focus on a single key industry; and key investments will be made in strategic emerging industries and future industries explicitly defined in the “15th Five-Year Plan” period.

At present, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund has become a hot LP that investment circles in South China are competing for. A VC institution in Guangzhou that focuses on biopharmaceutical investment disclosed that it is actively connecting with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Fund and plans to initiate and establish a subsidiary fund with a scale of about RMB 300 million. A person in charge at a VC institution in Shenzhen also told the reporter, “We have already submitted the application requirement forms. The current requirement is that the subsidiary fund needs to first secure commitments for external capital contributions of 40%.”

However, many institutions also admit: this national-level fund is large in scale, and at the same time it has corresponding restrictions on each individual investment and on company valuations, which means it needs to cover a greater number of projects. But in the market, there are not many truly high-quality early-stage projects, so the investment difficulty has increased significantly. How to avoid investing for the sake of investing and making blind moves under the “pressure to spend,” and how to truly and efficiently put this heavyweight fund to work, has become the core issue facing all applying institutions.