← Back to Briefings
June 4, 2026
M Stand
How This Coffee Shop Became The Labubu Dubai Chocolate of Coffee.
And you probably didn’t even know it’s backed by the same investors that invested in Popmart.
In 2017, former Tencent marketing executive Ge Dong launched a 50 sqm industrial coffee shop in Shanghai Jiangguo West Road. Following its rise to success, the brand now has over 600 stores nationwide—including 100 dedicated 'one store, one design' (一店一景) concept that defined the brand today.
As a result, you can now drink your coffee inside a futuristic space station or a minimalist Japanese Zen garden, to a modern grocery store.
After M Stand's explosive success they locked in a 4 billion RMB ($590 million USD) valuation during its late 2021 Series B round. The investment was led by Black Ant Capital and Qicheng Capital, alongside CMC Capital- founded by Li Ruigang, the iconic media powerhouse frequently named as 'China’s Rupert Murdoch'.
Since it's backed by Pop Mart investor Black Ant Capital and later by China’s own Rednote, M Stand is far from a regular specialty coffee shop and more like a hype driven content machine that just happens to serve coffee.
小红书 (Rednote), that made M Stand’s success popular among its Chinese community. Led a Series B+ round, investing 'hundreds of millions of RMB'. Which in 2025, alongside its expansion in Kyoto, they acquired the French bistro 'RAC BAR' founded by Frenchmen Simon Briens in Shanghai.
RAC BAR, widely recognized as one of the most iconic neighborhood anchors in Shanghai, served as the pioneer of China’s ‘Coffee by Day, Wine by Night’ movement.
By acquiring them, M Stand integrated items like the Blueberry Beef Burgers and Black Sesame Cheesecakes into their menu. Shortly after, they unveiled their Shanghai flagship, 'Maison by M Stand' which brought this day-to-night lifestyle model to life and marking its grand debut as a true lifestyle brand.
As their growth pivots towards creating premium architectural destinations rather than 'speciality cafe'. It's showing the shift in how VCs view consumer demand, how Investors are no longer betting on pure physical scale, how they are now betting experiential stores that create 'feelings'.
So is M Stand the Labubu of coffee? Or did it already become something else entirely?