A day later, the market provided its answer. On September 10, Insta360 Innovations' stock closed at 97.56 yuan, down 3.68%. Starting from 113.28 yuan on September 2, it fell for seven consecutive trading days. Compared to its historical high of 377.77 yuan on September 3, 2025, it has dropped nearly 74% in a year.

Mathematically, there is no wall between 100.01 yuan and 99.99 yuan that can alter a company's operations.

But for Insta360, 100 yuan matters far more than just a round number. From 377 yuan to 200 yuan, the market could still interpret it as a revaluation of a star stock. From 200 yuan to 150 yuan, debates could still arise about whether growth stocks were oversold. At 99 yuan, things start to change.

The shift from three digits to two signifies that the market is redefining it.

1. The Lesson of 100 Yuan

The market once favored Insta360 greatly.

In June 2025, Insta360 went public on the STAR Market with an issue price of 47.27 yuan and a price-to-earnings ratio of 20.04 times. In less than three months, the stock price surged to 377.77 yuan, nearly eight times the issue price. The company's operations did not expand eightfold in 90 days; what changed dramatically was investors' willingness to assign a future price.

One of the most vivid moments occurred on August 14, 2025.

After the global public beta announcement of Antigravity A1, Insta360 held an internal celebratory event. In a video that circulated, Liu Jingkang stood upstairs throwing cash to employees below. The company later explained that the cash came from his personal salary and was part of an internal activity, clarifying the impact of the video's spread. The next day, Insta360's stock hit a 20CM daily limit, closing at 224.42 yuan, adding about 15 billion yuan in market value in one day.

Antigravity A1, image source: Insta360 official WeChat account

Looking back now, there's a strong sense of temporal dislocation.

At that time, Antigravity A1 was still in the public beta phase. Its business model, sales volume, gross margin, and channel costs had not been truly validated by financial reports, yet the celebration had already begun, and the stock joined in. Less than a month later, Insta360's stock price surged to 377.77 yuan.

So what Liu Jingkang truly threw out was only cash, but what the capital market threw out was valuation.

The biggest difference between the capital market and a forgiving father is this: it can reward you early but can also quickly take back the rewards.

100 yuan is when it starts collecting debts. If Insta360 still maintains 50% profit growth this year, 100 yuan will likely lead more funds to discuss whether it was wrongly sold.

But Insta360 delivered a highly contradictory report card.

In the first half of 2026, revenue reached 5.517 billion yuan, up 50.29% year-on-year. However, net profit attributable to shareholders was only 30.4073 million yuan, down 94.15% year-on-year, and net profit attributable to shareholders excluding non-recurring items turned into a loss of 15.3392 million yuan.

Insta360 wasn't selling less; it was selling more. The question became: Why, after selling nearly 2 billion yuan more in goods, did it end up barely making a profit?

Image source: Insta360 official website

In the first half of 2026, Insta360's gross margin fell from 51.22% year-on-year to 41.42%, nearly 10 percentage points lower. Selling expenses reached 1.017 billion yuan, and R&D expenses were 1.007 billion yuan.

Management explained that the profit decline was due to factors such as rising storage chip prices, new business investments, and increased competition. Meanwhile, the company still defined 2026 as a "year of sowing" with heavy investments.

This is precisely what makes Insta360 worth watching now. Almost every expenditure can be strategically justified.

But the challenge for listed companies is never "whether there's a reason to spend money" but whether the company can still make money after so many correct reasons coincide. This is why the market becomes an increasingly strict father.

This is the issue Insta360 faces now. Investments are needed in drones, gimbal cameras, self-developed chips, AI imaging, expansion of offline flagship stores, and overseas channels. Meanwhile, DJI has entered Insta360's core market of panoramic cameras, forcing the company to spend money to defend its original advantages.

Image source: Insta360 2026 interim report

Insta360 faces a state more challenging than "burning money": the need to spend money increases while the profit margins of its old businesses decline.

The market hasn't forbidden Liu Jingkang from "sowing." It has just started demanding explanations for how many "seeds" a company can sow simultaneously.

2. The "Strict Father" Starts Collecting

The true severity of 100 yuan becomes more evident on the balance sheet.

As of June 2026, Insta360's inventory reached 6.212 billion yuan. At the end of 2025, this figure was 2.919 billion yuan, more than doubling in half a year. Meanwhile, the net cash flow from operating activities turned from a positive 241 million yuan year-on-year to a negative 2.761 billion yuan.

At the earnings briefing on September 4, Insta360 stated that about 66% of the 6.212 billion yuan in inventory consisted of raw materials, with storage chips being a significant component, accounting for 1.748 billion yuan in book balance. The company conducted strategic procurement of storage chips worth nearly 2 billion yuan in the first half, hoping to address supply-demand changes and price hikes.

Image source: Insta360 2026 interim report

If storage prices continue to rise, Insta360's early lock-in of low-priced inventory could provide a cost advantage next year. But whether this is a smart strategic purchase or a massive capital occupation will only be judged based on subsequent sales, gross margins, and inventory turnover.

This is precisely the rule change after 100 yuan. At 300 yuan, the market was willing to believe this was "strategic stockpiling." At 100 yuan, the market waits to see when inventory truly converts to cash.

This is the "strict father"—he doesn't say you're definitely wrong; he just stops accepting "time will prove me right" as an answer.

Meanwhile, 100 yuan has a more practical reference than how much retail investors lose: 148.92 yuan.

In October 2025, the company granted 951,482 second-class restricted stock units at 148.92 yuan per share to 676 incentive recipients.

Now, the secondary market price is 99.14 yuan, about one-third lower than the incentive grant price. For a tech company relying on high-level R&D teams and product talent, a market price falling below the incentive price at least changes the attractiveness of stocks as a long-term incentive tool.

Image source: Insta360 official website

This is another often-overlooked value of high valuations. 377 yuan didn't just make shareholders feel wealthy; it also made it easier for the company to tell talent: "Work with me for five years, and you'll hold a company that keeps appreciating."

100 yuan makes this statement harder to sell. So what 100 yuan truly penetrates is not Insta360's balance sheet but the entire expectation system formed over the past year: investors' expectations, employees' wealth expectations, and management's ability to trade high valuations for long-term patience.

This is why the market is a "strict father," not just an ordinary stock price scorekeeper.

It directly alters a company's behavioral costs through prices. When stock prices are high, mistakes are tolerated longer; when prices are low, every trial and error is scrutinized more carefully.

And Insta360 is at the stage where it needs time the most.

Drones haven't truly become profitable, Luna is expanding its market, chips require long-term R&D, and the global offline network is still being built. If all these businesses succeed in a few years, today's 100 yuan may seem overly pessimistic.

But the issue is that the market is no longer willing to factor "all success" into the stock price in advance.

This is the biggest gap between 377 yuan and 100 yuan—not that the company lost 278 yuan but that the market no longer assumes Liu Jingkang will win every bet.

3. Why Is the Market So Strict?

Thus, simplifying this decline to "the market is ruthless" is unfair to the capital market.

Last year, when Insta360's stock surged from 47.27 yuan to 377.77 yuan, it was the same market.

It didn't suddenly turn bad today.

The market simply has two faces: when a company continuously exceeds expectations, it is more generous than anyone; when a company's narrative starts running ahead of profits, it withdraws premiums faster than anyone.

This resembles a strict father.

He may not always be right and might misjudge his child, but his logic is stable: if you say you're smart, he looks at grades; if you say you're hardworking, he looks at results; if you say money is an investment in the future, he asks when returns will appear.

And these are not the questions Liu Jingkang has been most accustomed to answering in recent years.

Insta360 excels at telling the world how an overlooked imaging demand can be reinvented. This product-centric approach took the company from a dormitory to global leadership, allowing the market to assign a nearly 150 billion yuan valuation to a Chinese camera company for the first time.

But after going public, the market demands different capabilities. It requires Liu Jingkang not only to create but also to exercise restraint; not only to know when to start a project but also when to scale it back; not only to tell employees why celebrations are warranted but also to tell shareholders how much return an investment ultimately generates.

This is the true lesson 100 yuan teaches Insta360.

When Liu Jingkang threw money last year, why does that scene seem particularly jarring today? Not because an entrepreneur shouldn't celebrate internally.

But because it represented Insta360's easiest moment.

Antigravity A1 hadn't generated revenue, yet the team celebrated its birth; the next day, the stock hit a daily limit, and the capital market celebrated commercial success in advance. Back then, belief was abundant, and proof was unnecessary.

A year later, the situation has flipped entirely. Products continue to launch, the company keeps growing, and Liu Jingkang can still talk about the next product.

But the market starts asking: Where's the money? How much profit remains from 5.5 billion yuan in revenue? When will 6.2 billion yuan in inventory convert back to cash? When will the 290 million yuan loss from drones stop widening?

These are the questions truly pressing Insta360's stock price below 100 yuan.

Thus, Insta360's true "battle to defend 100 yuan" is not about whether the stock price can rebound to 101 yuan tomorrow. Even if it rebounds to 110 yuan next week, it doesn't answer any questions.

What Liu Jingkang truly needs to regain is not that 1 yuan but the trust the market took away behind 100 yuan: to make investors believe again that high R&D corresponds to high returns, high inventory to future revenue, and drones to a second growth curve rather than a second cost center.

If these answers emerge, 100 yuan may merely be a sharp market correction during Insta360's rapid expansion. If they don't, 100 yuan won't naturally become a floor just because it's a round number.

Remember, 99.14 yuan is still more than twice the IPO issue price of 47.27 yuan.

The uncomfortable aspect of the capital market as a "strict father" is this: it never guarantees a reward just because you've already taken a beating.

At 377 yuan, the market gave Insta360 nearly all its imagination. At 100 yuan, it starts taking back imagination item by item, leaving only what has been proven by financial reports.

Image source: Insta360 official website

This is why, for Insta360 today, 100 yuan signifies something more important: after going public, talent no longer exempts you from scrutiny.

And the true severity of a "strict father" is not that he doesn't allow his child to dream but that after the dream ends, he places a report card on the table and starts tallying the numbers.

(The header image for this article is sourced from the Insta360 official website.)