One of the most talked-about and popular camera brands in the current market often includes the name Insta360 portable cameras, cameras for extreme travel, as well as smartphone accessories for photography and video. This brand is also one of the Chinese companies that has expanded globally with a company valuation reaching billions of U.S. dollars.
Insta360 is a camera brand under the company Arashi Vision. Its headquarters is located in Shenzhen, China. In the past year, 2025, Liu Jingkang or JK Liu, the founder, took the company public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, pushing the company's value beyond 74 billion yuan, or over 1 billion U.S. dollars. At that time, JK Liu was only 33 years old, instantly becoming a billionaire. Forbes currently reports his wealth soaring to 2.8 billion U.S. dollars.
Insta360 started as one of the pioneers producing 360-degree cameras that became popular in a market previously dominated only by major tech companies. After success, it expanded into action cameras, competing with established giants like GoPro. Later, as the world entered an era dominated by content, the brand shifted focus to producing small cameras to serve the market flooded with short clips.
This article from Thairath Money'sHow to Make Moneycolumn delves into the journey and introduces JK Liu and Insta360, born from a university student's idea, rising to dominate the panoramic camera market and becoming second in the action camera market. Founded just over ten years ago, the brand now plans to challenge industry giants, growing rapidly from China to the global market.
Before discussing Insta360, let's get to know JK Liu. Born in 1991 and raised in China, he developed a passion for programming, teaching himself to code around age 12. He won national computer production competitions in China at both elementary and high school levels.
His academic path was exceptional. As a prodigy with national-level achievements, in 2010 he received an additional 20 points for university admission, allowing him to study software engineering at Nanjing University, a specialized software institute.
During university, JK Liu created many notable projects, gaining wide recognition for his innovation and invention skills. One such project was “Standard Face,” where he processed over 7,000 photos of fellow students to create a “standard face” for each faculty and department (though the author questions the privacy concerns of such data collection at that time). This project attracted significant online attention, earning him the nickname “Standard Face Guy.”
Another notable feat was successfully decoding the phone number of Zhou Hongyi, chairman of Qihoo 360, by analyzing the tones of phone keypad presses. This skill caught the eye of Kai-Fu Lee, chairman of Innovation Works and author of the book AI 2041, who openly invited JK Liu to join his team.
However, Kai-Fu Lee’s offer was declined, as JK Liu chose to pursue his own path as an entrepreneur and key activist for the future.
In 2013, he founded “Elite School Live,” a project supporting live streaming for students at top Chinese universities such as Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Nanjing University. This project offered comprehensive video live streaming services, covering filming, editing, and broadcasting—a forward-thinking concept at the time.
During this period, he developed over 30 technologies independently. Within a year, JK Liu led a team of over 20 people to conduct more than 200 live streams across six major cities and nine top universities nationwide. The service expanded into the corporate sector via a platform called “V Live.”
The idea for Insta360 came by chance when JK Liu tried Google Cardboard, an affordable VR headset made from cardboard and lenses by Google. It allowed panoramic 360-degree viewing of images and videos, creating an immersive experience as if inside the scene.
At that time, major manufacturers like Samsung and Ricoh had started launching panoramic cameras. However, their products required users to connect the camera to a smartphone via WiFi and then send images to the phone for processing to stitch the panorama—taking considerable time.
JK Liu immediately identified this as a pain point needing resolution. He believed an ideal panoramic camera should deliver instant results without complex or time-consuming processing. He decided to pivot the existing live streaming business toward serious development of “VR panoramic cameras” and began exploring opportunities in this nascent market.
He continuously raised funds until, in 2015, the Series A funding round enabled him to launch products and officially establish “Insta360,” marking the start of a 360-degree imaging technology company that would grow into a global player.
The company’s first breakthrough came in 2016 with the launch of Insta360 Nano, a panoramic camera usable independently or connected to an iPhone as an accessory. This product solved previous panoramic camera issues by allowing users to capture 360-degree photos or videos quickly without complicated steps.
After launch, company revenues soared, reaching 20 million yuan monthly. The product was praised at that year’s CES event, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak expressing admiration.
However, soon after, revenues reversed dramatically because the market had not yet embraced panoramic cameras widely. Undeterred, JK Liu launched the Insta360 ONE Series in 2017, a panoramic action camera competing directly with GoPro. This product gained strong popularity among users.
Under JK Liu’s leadership, Insta360 adapted swiftly and cleverly. In 2018, the brand released the panoramic action camera Series X continuously, outperforming major competitors Samsung from South Korea and Ricoh from Japan. It became the world’s top-selling panoramic camera brand. In the action camera market, it rose to second place, trailing only GoPro.
Within four years of its launch, Insta360 expanded offline sales to over 4,000 stores and partnered with Apple to distribute in more than 500 global locations. Online, it spread through over 100 distributors and raised several hundred million yuan in funding.
Another turning point came in 2019 with the launch of Insta360 GO, a tiny camera weighing only 18.3 grams, wearable on the user’s body for POV shots. This model was hailed as the king of cameras for the short-video era, perfectly meeting social creators’ needs.
A key strength of the company is its strong focus on research and innovation. In 2021, JK Liu pursued a differentiation strategy to surround the action camera market, not just competing directly but expanding into new photo and video markets simultaneously.
The goal was to cover every lens range and all shooting scenarios and activities comprehensively, breaking the dominance of action cameras from Japan, Europe, and the U.S., and becoming the world’s second-largest action camera brand by market share.
Each year, Insta360 releases new products and heavily invests in ongoing R&D. In 2022 alone, it launched products in three series, investing over 256 million yuan in R&D, ultimately achieving total revenue exceeding 2 billion yuan.
By 2023, R&D personnel made up half of the company. The company holds 238 approved patents domestically and internationally and was recognized as a national-level “Little Giant” company—meaning specialized, innovative, and high-growth potential. That same year, Insta360 earned 80% of its revenue from overseas markets, becoming a rapidly growing global brand.
In 2025, a major milestone arrived when Insta360, under Arashi Vision, went public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, boosting its market capitalization to approximately 74.185 billion yuan. JK Liu, as the company's key leader, became a full-fledged billionaire with a current wealth exceeding 2.8 billion U.S. dollars.
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