Drip Irrigation Drip Irrigation celebrates its fifth anniversary with the launch of "Niuma New Market," opening a new financing track in the contract market.

Li Xiaojia's Micro Connect held a press conference for the launch of the "New Markets (NUMA) Master Agreement" and the fifth anniversary celebration of Micro Connect at the Seaview Hall on the fourth floor of the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong at 2:30 PM on Monday, August 3. Li emphasized that "New Markets" serves as a market infrastructure connecting the asset side under contract law with the fund side under securities law, not aiming to replace existing stock or bond markets, but rather to make commercial contracts that generate cash flows in the real world investable. The experience accumulated over the past five years and the launch of "New Markets" targeting the contract market is intended to create a financing market belonging to the world of contracts outside the stock and bond markets. Regarding the operating model, Li pointed out that New Markets "doesn't engage with money, goods, or facilitate settlement and clearing," and seeks to outsource as much as possible of the custodial, trading execution, and investment decision-making processes to licensed intermediaries, minimizing the platforms own control over customer funds and transactions while continuously exploring ways to further divest associated risks. Meanwhile, the platform implements strict access restrictions, opening only to foreign institutional investors and professional investors (including sovereign wealth funds, private credit, insurance, asset management, family offices, etc.), and does not accept investments from funds within China. On the asset side, the products listed on New Markets are collectively referred to as "New Market Contracts." He explained that these are not single contracts but rather consist of three layers: the underlying layer is intrinsic contracts that already exist in real life; the middle layer comprises listed contracts that discount rights to the market; and the top layer includes trading contracts that investors subscribe to one by one. He further pointed out that in "New Market Contracts," the party A is the one providing value upfront, while party B is the one providing returns later. This means that only those who have acted as party A in intrinsic contracts have the qualification to bring their rights to New Markets and act as party B in listed contracts for financing. In other words, New Markets is not a marketplace where a funder directly comes in for financing with an underlying contract; it is a market where a party A that has previously invested in intrinsic contracts, sold goods, or contributed value in other ways can bring their rights from the intrinsic contract to New Markets for discounting or transfer financing. Reflecting on his five-year entrepreneurial journey, Li candidly admitted that he "stepped into countless pits" along the way, and only when self-developed intelligent AI technology matures in early 2026 does he expect to run through the accumulated data, contracts, and business logic. He sighed, "I think we're finally embarking on the road to success." Regarding the critical role of AI in New Markets, he acknowledged that the team did not have foresight from the beginning, but rather found solutions after being pushed to a wall by numerous challenges. "We are not smart enough to foresee AI; every pit we fell into over the past five years is telling us what this market truly needs." "If I had known on the day I started that there would be so many walls to hit, and that we would have to rely on something we couldn't even name at that time to save us, I really might not have dared to start a business." Li expressed that Micro Connect was able to get through this phase "half due to luck and half due to persistence," noting that without the presence of AI technology, "we wouldn't have been able to achieve this even after exploring for 30 more years." He explained that New Markets needs to deal with a massive volume of contracts in the real economy that are "fragmented, micro, scattered, non-standard, and high-frequency," which is not simply an efficiency difference where "humans do it a little slower while AI does it faster," but represents a scale barrier that humans cannot overcome at all. Even hiring more talent won't allow for the manual processing of millions of contracts; only self-developed intelligent AI can complete the entire link of interpretation, structuring, and investment portfolio matching. Li noted that in 2025, Micro Connect applied for listing on HKEX through Chapter 21 of the Listing Rules, primarily considering a listed fund model to initiate New Markets. To this end, they had several rounds of pre-listing communication with regulators. In the end, they became increasingly aware that the resources, capabilities, and team building required for these two paths are entirely different; and building the market has always been their original intention. Therefore, in November 2025, they halted the process of becoming a Chapter 21 listed company and refocused on "doing the market." Looking back today, that was the right decision. He admitted that the past five years for Micro Connect were not easy. In the early days of entrepreneurship, they were very luckyraising $600 million and quickly entering the 1.0 stage, investing in small businesses one by one through a drip approach. They hired a considerable team and deployed $4.4 billion in funds. But during the pandemic, challenges were substantial, compounded by the fact that they were operating in the form of a pilot at the time, and it was unclear if all the money could be successfully retrieved. Thus, their primary task at that time became to halt investments and focus on recovering the funds. Fortunately, most of the investments have been recovered today, with some still in progress. More importantly, this experience has verified the return potential of this asset class. Had they had the knowledge and tools of today back then, the quality of contract assets would have certainly been better explored. As for the WINOX interval that the market is most concerned about, Li stated that they currently "don't know, but hope to know soon."