Kuok Meng Xiong (“MX”)

Kuok Meng Xiong — known more often as MX — is the Founder and Managing Partner of K3, a Singapore-based investment firm. He established K3 Ventures in 2017. What began as a two-person operation has since become a multi-fund platform backing more than 130 companies globally.

MX brings decades of experience both as an operator and as an investor. He has held a variety of operating roles all the way from management positions to frontline (bellboy) and back of the house (line cook) positions. He started his career at Wilmar International in 2009, before moving to the Shangri-La Group where he spent 10 years in senior leadership roles including Managing Director. At Shangri-La, he oversaw hotel operations, project development, and new business expansion across markets including China and Hong Kong SAR, South Asia, and Central Asia. This period instilled in him multiple core operating principles that endure in K3’s investment credo to today – the importance of insights from the ground, always listen to the customer, and the unassailable advantage of having the lowest cost of production.

As an investor, MX has backed more than 19 companies valued at over US$1 billion each, including names such as Grab, Palantir, SpaceX, and ByteDance. In his investments, MX couples an entrepreneur’s instinct of spotting early opportunity with an ethos of long-term partnership – the same approach that underpinned his previous operating roles. This has coalesced into K3’s hallmark investment approach of putting in not just capital but also catalytic ‘acts of service’ that can transfomatively shape a company’s growth journey.

MX serves as the Group Managing Director of PPB Group Berhad, the Managing Director of Kuok Brothers Sdn Bhd, and as Alternate Director to the Chairman of Kuok Group Singapore. He is also a Director on the board of China World Trade Centre. In these roles, he contributes to the stewardship of the Group’s businesses spanning agribusiness, hospitality, media, property, and investments.

MX also serves on the boards of Tuya Inc, Malaysia-China Business Council, Anglo-Chinese Schools Foundation, and OceanX Education. He is an Advisor to Presight, a G42 company, on its AI and venture strategy.

MX holds a Bachelor of Science in Hotel Administration from Cornell University. A Singapore citizen, MX splits his time between Singapore and Malaysia.