China AI Fieldwork for Investment Committees
Prepare China AI investment fieldwork around adoption evidence, revenue quality, compute costs, customer references and unresolved diligence questions.
Investment fieldwork should test the assumptions that determine a business's economics. Separate a model demonstration from customer adoption, contract quality and sustainable margins. A meeting with a management team can identify questions for diligence; it does not verify revenue, ownership or the value of an investment.
What to evaluate
Thesis
State which market, capability or competitive assumption fieldwork should test.
Evidence
Triangulate management claims with workflows, customers, partners and operating artefacts.
Economics
Examine revenue quality, deployment cost, retention, capital intensity and scale constraints.
Risk
Map regulation, supply, talent, security, governance and exit dependencies.
Worked evaluation exercise
The following is an illustrative assessment exercise, not a reported customer result.
For a hypothetical enterprise-software business, reconcile the number of reported deployments with paying customers and recurring contracts. Ask how pilot revenue, implementation services and ongoing subscription revenue are separated. Examine whether serving a larger customer increases compute and support costs faster than revenue. Record which figures were independently checked and which remain management statements. The investment committee should see those limitations before considering any commitment.
Questions for the operating team
- What observation would change the investment thesis?
- Which metric depends on a non-recurring pilot?
- Where is value captured across the stack?
Warning signs
- Meeting access treated as endorsement.
- Technology novelty substituted for adoption.
- Unit economics extrapolated before production.
Planning the visit
Use these questions to scope an industry-focused China AI program. Agree which records and operating workflows can be examined before confirming meetings; host participation and access require confirmation. Our research method explains how we structure the brief and follow-up.
References and scope
These references provide policy or risk-management context. They do not independently verify a host's performance or the illustrative exercise above.