Brian Nichols is the co-founder of Angel Squad, a community where you’ll learn how to angel invest and get a chance to invest as little as $1k into Hustle Fund's top performing early-stage startups

Li Ka-shing's father died of tuberculosis when Li was 15, forcing him to drop out of school and support his family as a factory worker. By 22 he had saved enough to start his own plastics manufacturing company. By his early 30s he had figured out that real estate was where Hong Kong's real money would be made.

Then in 1967, during the riots triggered by the Cultural Revolution in mainland China, property prices in Hong Kong collapsed. Everyone was selling. Li was buying.

He did it again after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, when sentiment toward Hong Kong's future was as dark as it had been in decades. He bought then too.

That pattern of buying when others are selling defines Li Ka-shing investments across seven decades.

The Empire He Built

Li's flagship vehicle, CK Hutchison Holdings, operates across ports, retail, infrastructure, telecommunications, and energy in over 50 countries. Its 2024 revenue was $61.4 billion. A subsidiary, AS Watson Group, runs over 16,300 health and beauty stores across Europe and Asia, making it one of the world's largest retail chains. CK Infrastructure owns significant stakes in UK water suppliers, rail leasing businesses, and utility assets. Li controls roughly 30% of CK Hutchison and 38% of CK Asset Holdings, his real estate vehicle.

His net worth hit $45.1 billion in the 2026 Forbes Hong Kong Rich List, up from $38.9 billion the year before, keeping him as Hong Kong's wealthiest individual at 97.

The Venture Capital Operation Nobody Expected

The surprising chapter of Li Ka-shing's story is Horizons Ventures, the venture arm run by his longtime partner Solina Chau. In 2007, Chau approached Li with a proposal to invest in Facebook at what seemed like a steep $15 billion valuation. He reportedly said yes within five minutes and committed $60 million, later doubling the figure through the Li Ka Shing Foundation for a total stake of $120 million. The returns at Facebook's 2012 IPO ran into the billions.

That was the beginning. Horizons backed Skype, Siri before Apple acquired it, Spotify, Waze, and Zoom. The Zoom investment began in 2013, when Horizons participated in early funding rounds. By 2020, when the pandemic turned Zoom into a household verb, Li's roughly 8.5% stake was worth approximately $11 billion at peak, representing about a third of his entire net worth from two rounds totaling roughly $36 million in initial commitments.

Horizons also backed Impossible Foods, joining a $108 million round alongside Bill Gates in 2015. The fund now has over 125 active investments.

Shiyan Koh of Hustle Fund has written about the value of backing companies that change everyday behavior, not just enterprise software. Li's Horizons portfolio reflects exactly that orientation: Facebook changed how people communicate, Siri changed how people interact with devices, Zoom changed how teams work, and Impossible Foods is trying to change what people eat. All of them were meaningful life-behavior bets, not incremental improvements.

What Horizons Does Differently

Angel Squad members co-investing alongside Hustle Fund at the early stage operate on similar principles: back companies that change fundamental behavior, invest before the market consensus forms, and hold for the long term. Li's Horizons portfolio is distinguished by that last part specifically. The fund tends to hold positions far longer than conventional VC, and the returns on patience have been extraordinary. Find out how this approach plays out in early-stage deals at hustlefund.vc/squad.

The Panama Canal Controversy

In early 2025, CK Hutchison's plan to sell its Panama Canal port assets to a BlackRock-led consortium angered Beijing significantly. State media ran critical commentary about the deal. A Panama Supreme Court decision in January 2026 voided CK Hutchison's operating concession for two ports at the canal, representing one of the most significant geopolitical complications in the company's history. Li's family faces the ongoing challenge of managing a global business empire while navigating Hong Kong's shifting political dynamics.

That tension is a reminder that Li's most useful investing lesson isn't just about buying when others are fearful. It's about building diversification across sectors and geographies deep enough that no single geopolitical shock can threaten the whole.

The Takeaway for Early-Stage Investors

Li started with nothing and built across multiple technology cycles, political crises, and market panics. His instinct to move against consensus is legendary. His venture arm proved that the same instinct that worked in Hong Kong real estate in 1967 could work in Silicon Valley in 2007.

Eric Bahn of Hustle Fund has said that the most important edge in early-stage investing is the willingness to believe something before other people believe it. Li proved that principle across seven decades and two entirely different types of asset classes.