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A U.S. medical device startup accepted foreign capital to accelerate the development of a novel cardiovascular technology.

Years later, that investment has become a choke point: the minority shareholder is preventing the company from raising new funding, stalling its ability to operate even as the Chinese conglomerate pursues parallel work with a competitor. The obvious question is why and what incentive an investor would have to keep a promising portfolio company in financial limbo.

Minnesota-based startup FastWave Medical, founded in 2021, is advancing a next-generation approach to intravascular lithotripsy (IVL), a technology used to treat calcific artery disease, which affects more than 18 million Americans. Its early innovations attracted international interest, including from a Chinese pharmaceutical giant seeking to expand its footprint in the medtech space.

Today, however, that foreign capital has become an albatross for FastWave. Grand Pharmaceutical Group Limited ("Grand Pharma")—a publicly traded Hong Kong-based conglomerate—is essentially holding FastWave hostage, blocking the company's ability to accept new funding, while partnering with a competitor. While Grand Pharma's international profile is well-established and carefully curated, its internal operations remain opaque, shaped by forces that predate its global ambitions.

Capital in the Crosscurrents of a Trade War

In 2021, Grand Pharma invested $12 million in FastWave Medical in exchange for approximately 40% voting power, as well as consent rights and board representation. The two companies signed a "strategic cooperation agreement" that effectively positioned FastWave as Grand Pharma's overseas R&D platform.

The investment preceded a significant tightening of U.S. scrutiny over Chinese capital. According to Rhodium Group data, annual Chinese investment in the United States fell from $46 billion in 2016 to less than $5 billion in 2022. More recently, the U.S. government has moved to further restrict both inbound Chinese investment and outbound U.S. investment in strategic technologies, reflecting escalating economic and security tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Grand Pharma was among a wave of Chinese firms that took sizable stakes in Western medical-technology companies before those restrictions intensified. Now, as the U.S.-China trade war heats up, the partnership between FastWave and Grand Pharma has come to be viewed as a case study in the risks of entangling early-stage medical innovation with strategic foreign capital.

Advancing Cardiovascular Treatment Options

FastWave positions itself at the forefront of new IVL technology, which uses sound waves to break up the hard calcium deposits that lead to coronary artery disease (CAD) and peripheral artery disease (PAD). FastWave builds on the core premise of IVL, addressing some of the limitations of first-generation platforms.

The company's development process is grounded in direct feedback from physicians, which underpins FastWave's two IVL platforms: Sola, a coronary laser-based platform, and Artero, a peripheral electric-based IVL system—both of which have advanced over the company's four-year history.

The progress has not gone unnoticed. Fierce Medtech named FastWave to their 2024 "Fierce 15," a selective list spotlighting the year's most promising medtech startups. Additionally, MD+DI recognized FastWave as its Medtech Company of the Year 2025, recognizing companies demonstrating exceptional innovation and momentum.

Given FastWave's progress and industry recognition, the question naturally follows: what would motivate Grand Pharma to undermine a portfolio company that appears to be doing exactly what investors typically want?

From Partnership to Pressure

In 2022 and 2023, Beijing's strategy appeared to shift away from acquiring Western IP as quickly as possible to focusing on R&D and manufacturing at home as part of its broader "dual circulation" economic strategy. It began to emphasize domestic innovation over foreign partnerships, and Chinese President Xi tightened internal controls on Chinese companies' overseas interactions.

That didn't prevent Grand Pharma from continuing to pursue American IP. The company agreed to buy 87.5% of U.S.-based drug/device maker BlackSwan Vascular for $37.5 million in 2023.

Sirtex Medical, Grand Pharma's U.S. subsidiary that develops radiation drugs/devices, provides a more aggressive example of that strategy. In 2018, Grand Pharma acquired Sirtex for over one billion dollars after outbidding Palo Alto-based Varian Medical Systems by roughly 25%, an unusually steep premium in the medical device sector.

In multiple international partnerships, Grand Pharma has displayed a negotiating posture that former partners describe as asymmetrical: aggressive when leverage shifts, unyielding when legal ambiguities arise, and highly resistant to compromise once assets or intellectual property are in play.

Contracts that begin as collaborations come to resemble standoffs. Smaller companies often find themselves in disputes with a significant power imbalance. Resolution depends less on market logic than on endurance.

According to FastWave, Grand Pharma has engaged in a series of egregious conduct. The Chinese investor has blocked financing, interfered with governance, and withheld material disclosures related to conflicts of interest, according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal.

Notably, Grand Pharma signed a cooperation agreement with Jiangsu Zhenyi Medical, a Chinese firm developing a device similar to FastWave's IVL system. But Grand Pharma didn't disclose this agreement to FastWave. The American company learned of the Jiangsu deal through public reporting.

FastWave's experience suggests that Grand Pharma has already deprioritized its U.S. partner through actions that constrain financing and operations—conduct that mirrors approaches seen in Beijing's broader national economic strategy.

The New Terms of Engagement

Because American national-security doctrine views biotech, medtech, imaging, and energy-delivery devices as particularly vulnerable to coercive leverage, the U.S. government is party to the FastWave-Grand Pharma embroglio.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is a U.S. government interagency group, chaired by the Treasury Department, that reviews foreign investments in U.S. businesses for potential national security risks. CFIUS has the power to block or modify transactions it deems to be threats.

FastWave's laser-based IVL system qualifies as "critical technology" under U.S. export control legislation, and it represents potential dual-use military or industrial applications, which triggered the need for a filing with CFIUS, which FastWave submitted in 2025.

The petition to CFIUS positions FastWave's conflict with Grand Pharma not just as a business dispute. It's also a worrisome case study for regulators.

For U.S. policymakers, the broader concern is whether strategically sensitive technology remains insulated from foreign control or coercive influence. In FastWave's case, advances in acoustic energy delivery and materials science intersect with applications in defense and semiconductor manufacturing. This convergence places the company squarely within the category of dual-use innovation that export controls and foreign investment reviews are designed to protect.

In public reporting, FastWave has described Grand Pharma's pattern of governance obstruction, undisclosed conflicts, and resistance to essential financing that has impaired the company's operations, discouraged new investment, and put the development of critical medical devices at risk.

For global companies considering partnerships with powerful Chinese investors, a deep understanding of their cultural, historical, and economic context is no longer optional. It is due diligence.