Summary:
In recent years, providing long-term and stable funding for technological innovation has become an important issue in China. Early-stage technology firms usually face long R&D cycles, high investment needs, and high commercialization risks, and therefore rely on patient capital that focuses on long-term value rather than short-term returns. Whether an investment can be regarded as patient capital depends fundamentally on whether investors pursue long-term value rather than short-term gains. Non-financial firms are important investors in China's private equity market, but existing studies mainly focus on corporate venture capital (CVC), namely direct investments in startups for strategic purposes. Much less is known about non-financial firms’ role as limited partners (LPs) in venture capital funds. This paper examines whether corporate LPs can provide patient capital, how this role differs across different types of corporate LPs, and how their investment performance varies. Existing studies often measure patient capital based on investors’ holding periods, turnover, or governance participation in secondary markets. In private equity markets, however, actual holding periods are often affected by IPO approval procedures, exit channels, and capital market cycles. Therefore, they may not accurately reflect investors’ subjective patience. Accordingly, this paper starts from investors’ active choice of project types and uses the share of early-stage technology projects invested in by LP-backed funds as the main measure of LP patience. This paper collects LP information, fund investment and exit events from the Zero2IPO database, a leading commercial database on private equity investment in China, and constructs an LP-fund level dataset from 2000 to 2022. It then obtains granted invention patent data from the China National Intellectual Property Administration and matches them with corporate LPs, portfolio firms, and CVC parent companies. The comparison between CVC and corporate LP investments shows that CVC emphasizes deep technological and strategic collaboration with portfolio firms, while corporate LP investment is broader in nature. Specifically, startups backed by corporate LPs have lower technological similarity with the LPs themselves, but higher shares of early-stage and technology-oriented projects. The empirical results show that corporate LP-backed funds invest more in early-stage technology projects than funds backed by non-corporate LPs, suggesting that corporate LPs are more patient. This pattern is even stronger among high-technology corporate LPs, whose funds allocate more to early-stage and technology-oriented projects, and invest in startups with higher innovation intensity. Although state-owned enterprise (SOE) LPs do not show a stronger preference for early-stage technology projects overall, those SOE LPs in high-technology industries clearly favor early-stage technology projects. As for performance, funds backed by high-technology corporate LPs have lower exit and IPO rates. Further analysis shows their reinvestment decisions are weakly related to short-term financial outcomes such as exit and IPO rates, consistent with their strategic investment motives. This paper makes two main contributions. First, it provides evidence on the sources of patient capital in China's private equity market. By measuring LP patience with the share of early-stage technology projects invested by LP-backed funds, the paper shows that high-technology corporate LPs are the most patient, and that state-owned corporate LPs in high-technology industries also tend to support early-stage technology projects. Second, the paper extends the literature on non-financial firms’ participation in private equity. By comparing CVC with corporate LP investment, it shows that CVC focuses more on technological and strategic synergies, while corporate LP investment is broader in scope, helping explain firms’ motives for investing as LPs. Based on these findings, this paper offers three policy implications. First, high-technology state-owned enterprises should be encouraged to act as LPs in early-stage technology funds and support portfolio firms with industrial resources, while adopting longer evaluation horizons for strategic projects. Second, tax incentives should be provided to corporate LPs investing in early-stage hard-tech firms to improve long-term returns and guide capital toward key sectors. Third, secondary transfer and exit mechanisms should be improved to reduce liquidity pressure on corporate LPs and strengthen their ability to continuously support early-stage technological innovation.
[1]董志勇和毕悦,2025,《壮大耐心资本:理论、历史与现实》,《经济学动态》第4期,第18~32页。 [2]辜胜阻、庄芹芹和曹誉波,2016,《构建服务实体经济多层次资本市场的路径选择》,《管理世界》第4期,第1~9页。 [3]姜中裕和吴福象,2024,《耐心资本、数字经济与创新效率——基于制造业A股上市公司的经验证据》,《河海大学学报(哲学社会科学版)》第2期,第121~133页。 [4]寇宗来和刘学悦,2020,《中国企业的专利行为:特征事实以及来自创新政策的影响》,《经济研究》第3期,第83~99页。 [5]李三希、刘希和孙海琳,2024,《以耐心资本推动新质生产力发展:特征意义、现状问题与培育路径》,《财经问题研究》第10期,第14~28页。 [6]林毅夫和王燕,2017,《新结构经济学:将“耐心资本”作为一种比较优势》,《开发性金融研究》第1期,第3~15页。 [7]龙小宁和张靖,2021,《IPO与专利管理:基于中国企业的实证研究》,《经济研究》第8期,第127~142页。 [8]陆瑶和施函青,2022,《我国科技企业融资的决定因素研究——基于科创板企业的机器学习分析》,《金融研究》第9期,第132~151页。 [9]余琰、罗炜、李怡宗和朱琪,2014,《国有风险投资的投资行为和投资成效》,《经济研究》第2期,第32~46页。 [10]余泳泽、胡鹏和朱子政,2025,《耐心资本与企业颠覆性创新——基于企业机构投资者视角》,《中国工业经济》第10期,第59~77页。 [11]张琼琳,2022,《国有企业参与私募股权基金投资优化与退出管理分析》,《现代商业》第20期,第87~89页。 [12]周翔翼、仲晓雨和侯晓辉,2023,《中国私募股权母基金的投资绩效研究》,《经济管理学刊》第4期,第279~322页。 [13]Bloom, N.,M. Schankerman and J. Van Reenen,2013, “Identifying Technology Spillovers and Product Market Rivalry”, Econometrica, 81(4), pp. 1347~1393. [14]Chesbrough, H. W.,2002, “Making Sense of Corporate Venture Capital”, Harvard Business Review, 80(3), pp. 90~99. [15]Deeg, R. and I. Hardie, 2016, “What is Patient Capital and Who Supplies it?”, Socio-Economic Review, 14(4), pp. 627~645. [16]Dushnitsky, G. and M. J. Lenox, 2005, “When Do Incumbents Learn from Entrepreneurial Ventures? Corporate Venture Capital and Investing Firm Innovation Rates”,Research Policy, 34(5), pp. 615~639. [17]Dushnitsky, G. and Z.B. Shapira, 2010, “Entrepreneurial Finance Meets Corporate Reality: Comparing Investment Practices and Performance of Corporate and Independent Venture Capitalists”,Strategic Management Journal, 31(9), pp. 990 ~1017. [18]Fang, H., J. R. Nofsinger, Z. Song and S. Wang, 2018, “Private Equity Performance and Capital Flows: Evidence from China”, Emerging Markets Review, 37, pp. 223~244. [19]Fang, L., V. Ivashina and J. Lerner, 2015, “The Disintermediation of Financial Markets: Direct Investing in Private Equity”, Journal of Financial Economics, 116(1), pp. 160~178. [20]Gibbons, R. and R. Henderson, 2012, “What Do Managers Do? Exploring Persistent Performance Differences Among Seemingly Similar Enterprises”, Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 13-020. [21]Gompers, P. A. and V. Mukharlyamov, 2022, “Transferable Skills? Founders as Venture Capitalists”, NBER Working Paper, No. 29907. [22]Gompers, P. and J. Lerner, 2001, “The Venture Capital Revolution”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 15(2), pp. 145~168. [23]Ivashina, V. and J. Lerner, 2019, “Patient Capital: the Challenges and Promises of Long-term Investing”, Princeton University Press, pp. 7~13. [24]Jia, N. and D. Wang, 2017, “Skin in the Game: General Partner Capital Commitment, Investment Behavior and Venture Capital Fund Performance”, Journal of Corporate Finance, 47, pp. 110~130. [25]Kaplan, S. N. and A. Schoar, 2005, “Private Equity Performance: Returns, Persistence and Capital Flows”,Journal of Finance, 60(4), pp. 1791~1823. [26]Lerner, J. and A. Schoar, 2004, “The Illiquidity Puzzle: Theory and Evidence from Private Equity”,Journal of Financial Economics, 72(1), pp.3~40. [27]Lerner, J., A. Schoar and W. Wongsunwai, 2007, “Smart Institutions, Foolish Choices: The Limited Partner Performance Puzzle”, The Journal of Finance, 62(2), pp. 731~764. [28]Lin, L., 2013, “The Private Equity Limited Partnership in China: A Critical Evaluation of Active Limited Partners”, Journal of Corporate Law Studies, 13(1), pp. 185~217. [29]Ma, S.,2020, “The Life Cycle of Corporate Venture Capital”, Review of Financial Studies, 33(1), pp. 358~394. [30]Malmendier, U. andS. Nagel, 2011, “Depression Babies: Do Macroeconomic Experiences Affect Risk Taking”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(1), pp. 373~416. [31]Ozmel, U., D. Yavuz, T. Trombley and R. Gulati, 2020, “Interfirm Ties Between Ventures and Limited Partners of Venture Capital Funds: Performance Effects in Financial Markets”,Organization Science, 31(3), pp. 698~719. [32]Sensoy, B.A., Y. Wang and M.S. Weisbach, 2014, “Limited Partner Performance and the Maturing of the Private Equity Industry”, Journal of Financial Economics, 112(3), pp. 320~343. [33]Wang, Q. S., S. Lai and H. D. Anderson, 2021, “VC Fund Preferences and Exits of Individual Investors”, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, 67, pp. 101~127.
