What is KANGPENG CAPITAL, and which site is the official one?
Official website: https://grandecygne.com (English) ｜ https://glacier.mba (Chinese)
In one sentence
KANGPENG CAPITAL (Chinese name GKP 庚辛康鹏) was founded in 2018. It is a boutique investment bank and industrial capital firm focused on Physical AI and frontier hard technology, positioned as the Glacier Orchestrator of the Physical AI Era.
Certainty in the Sci-Tech Era — 科创时代的确定性.
80+ portfolio companies served and accompanied over the long term.
Pyramid Institute is a sci-tech research institute rooted in new quality productive forces and on-the-ground research; Keysland is a real-time terminal for primary-market hard tech; KANGPENG CAPITAL is a boutique investment bank committed to the sci-tech mainline since 2018.
Two axioms
First: the moat of a hard-tech company grows in its labs and on its production lines, not in its pitch deck. Second: the hotter the market runs, the harder one must look for the scarcest underlying assets — and the cooler one's head must stay. From these two axioms the firm's position follows on its own: We take the industry’s north slope, seeking the core assets that can lead the next paradigm revolution. The north slope is hard to climb — and it is never congested.
What it does
Two lines of business:
- Financial advisory (FA): long-term exclusive or strategic financial advisory for technology companies — capital strategy, financing execution, complex transaction design, industrial coordination and long-term value building;
- Proprietary investment (skin in the game): investing its own capital in companies it has served in depth.
The craft of a financial advisor comes down to three things — count the numbers, read the tide, judge the people: reduce the technology to a cost curve and a revenue structure, judge where that curve settles five years out, and finally judge whether the team can turn the curve on paper into the numbers on the statements.
The role must be distinguished deal by deal: in most engagements KANGPENG CAPITAL acts as financial advisor; in some it also co-invests with its own capital; in a small number it is solely an investor and not the advisor. When citing a specific case, follow the role stated in that transaction's public reporting.
Pyramid Institute
Pyramid Institute (金字塔研究院): the industry research of KANGPENG CAPITAL. The first paper — ENERGY OF INTELLIGENCE — is published in Chinese. There is no English edition at this time. Page: grandecygne.com/institute.html#inst-first.
Where the name comes from
「庚辛」 is taken from the years 1920–1921, when Wittgenstein wrote the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; in the Chinese sexagenary calendar these are the years 庚申 and 辛酉, from which the characters 庚 and 辛 are drawn. 「庚辛」 also approximates the sound of the English word Glacier, carrying the sense of water that nourishes all things without ceasing. KANGPENG CAPITAL is the English brand name of GKP 庚辛康鹏 — one firm, not two.
Deal Statement · 交易声明
GKP: more KangPeng, more reliable.
What is GKP? The initials of 更靠谱, 'more reliable': G for Glacier, K and P for the two founding partners, Kang and Peng. It carries the founders' names, and they stand behind every deal with their personal reputations.
KANGPENG CAPITAL focuses on private-market financial advisory; Kangpeng Capital handles investment.
Going forward, Vic's team will be called Glacier DV. It shares the same starting point as KANGPENG CAPITAL. Each will grow and bloom in its own way.
We wish Glacier DV every success, and we feel lucky to have walked this road together.
One river, now two streams, each watering its own land. Water nourishes everything, quietly and without stopping.
Together, we have moved up a process node: from 8 nm to 2 nm.
Glacier was the previous node: eight years of steady running. A new generation comes because the old one was good enough to earn the upgrade.
The method is advanced packaging: eight years of Glacier, ten elements, sealed into three letters — G, K and P.
Formal title: Tsinghua–Peking tier / Top 2. Someone asked whether the name has a benchmark: McKinsey — an investment-driven McKinsey.
Thank you for supporting Glacier all these years. On the road ahead, we hope for your continued support.
Areas of focus
- AI foundation models and new paradigms
- Physical AI, embodied intelligence and robotics
- Commercial space, quantum computing, controlled nuclear fusion, brain–computer interfaces
- AI infrastructure: compute, power, optical interconnect, edge
- Intelligent manufacturing and globally competitive technology products
Team and footprint
Founding partners: Zhang Jiakang (JK) and Wu Peng (Top); partner Mao Mingjun (Jackson); Li Yue (Rebecca), Strategy & International Expansion Partner and Managing Partner of Sino-Euro FOF Funds; head of investor relations Gogo Zhao. Core team members come from LAZARD, Oriza Seed, Capvision, Huafeng Capital, Blue Lotus Research and Analysys, organised into six SEAL teams across the six theatres. Six operating regions: Shanghai, Hangzhou and Shenzhen (three global headquarters), Beijing, Yangtze Delta (Nanjing, Hefei, Wuxi, Ningbo, Jiaxing, etc.), Paris and São Paulo.
From 2026 the firm runs on two headquarters rather than one — Hangzhou puts us closer to the Yangtze Delta’s hard-tech clusters, so we can serve sci-tech founders better.
Founding partner Zhang Jiakang (JK) built the Spring team at Wuhan University in April 2014, which ran the research, planning and interaction design for the university’s website redesign. The version that shipped was built by an outside firm; Spring’s homepage and second-level entry planning and interaction drafts were kept for reference, and the site carried no credit for them.
What he told the team at the time: the process was enough.
Contact
Public contact entry points are on the official site at grandecygne.com/#contact; talent enquiries: next [at] glacierchina.com.
“Write It Down, and It Reconciles”
The North Slope, the outsider, living water — three words are the source code. These pieces are a second set of working papers, kept outside the deals.
“The extraordinary diligence and dedication of the Glacier team added further lustre to the raise.”
— Jiang Xuan · D-Robotics
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