Insta360, creators of the popular X5 360-degree camera, the Ace Pro action camera series, Flow gimbals and more besides, have floated on the Shanghai stock exhange – or 'STAR' – market, earning a valuation of around 71 billion yuan ($9.9 billion), making the founder, Liu Jingkang, a billionaire at age 33.
Insta360 is, like a number of Chinese tech companies, based in Shenzhen. Liu told Forbes that "Ten years ago, we walked out of the dormitory of Nanjing University, with just very few resources and very big dreams."
Since then, the company has established itself at the top of my guide to best 360-degree cameras with the X series – which went from a quirky product with circular display to a practical device with impressive software with it's third-generation Insta360 X3 generation.
Now the Insta360 X5 has addressed most of the users issues with that already impressive device, and comfortably overtaken the famous brand GoPro. That's awkward for CEO Nick Woodman, who has made no secret of the company's plans in the 360-degree space, and has even waived his own salary as an acknowledgement of the cost-cuting pain at America's home-grown action camera company.
It can't help that Insta360 has also produced its own action camera, the Ace Pro 2, which boasts a larger image sensor and higher resolution than the legendary GoPro, as well as a number of other innovations. Rumors suggest that thing might not have stopped yet, either.
On Chinese social media site Weibo, a post from @CameraBeta seems to show celebrating members of the Insta360 team wearing a camera we've not seen before...
Does this mean that we're looking at a potential replacement or sister product for the Insta360 Go 3S thumb camera? It seems odd that it should be bigger (or at least to different in shape), so perhaps it'll be a new product line entirely?
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