ChangXin Technology surpasses 3 trillion CNY in market cap after IPO

On July 27, Changxin Technology, the largest IPO in the history of the STAR Market, officially listed, with its market capitalization immediately reaching 3 trillion yuan, making it the company with the highest market capitalization on the A-share market and the largest technology company by market cap in A-share history.

The founding of CXMT began with Project "506," a domestic initiative to develop DRAM (Dynamic Random-Access Memory) chips, aimed at breaking the long-standing monopoly of U.S. and South Korean memory giants and achieving a breakthrough in China’s memory chip industry. Under a collaboration model in which Hefei’s state-owned capital provided funding and GigaDevice’s chairman, Zhu Yiming, contributed technology, the two parties quickly aligned. Subsequently, CXMT received substantial financial support from dozens of investment institutions during its R&D and expansion phases. From its angel round in 2018 to June 2025, CXMT completed nine funding rounds, raising tens of billions of yuan. By the date of the prospectus signing, it had 60 shareholders. After a decade of patient nurturing and support, these stakeholders collectively propelled CXMT to become China’s leading and the world’s fourth-largest DRAM chip manufacturer.

With ChangXin Technologies successfully listing on the capital market, the three most important shareholders behind its IPO celebration are: Hefei’s state-owned capital, which was the earliest and most committed investor; the various capital providers that participated in its nine funding rounds and continued support during the IPO strategic investment phase; and the company’s founding team led by Zhu Yiming.

Among them, Hefei’s state-owned assets, which were the earliest and largest investor in CXMT, emerged as the biggest winner, with estimated unrealized gains exceeding one trillion yuan—equivalent to 70% of Hefei’s projected 2025 GDP. The “Hefei model” of government support for hard technology has become an industry benchmark. The founding team of CXMT has also reached the pinnacle of their careers. Including CXMT’s founder and chairman, Zhu Yiming, ten directors and senior executives each have a net worth exceeding 100 million yuan; based on CXMT’s closing price on its first trading day, Zhu Yiming’s personal wealth reached 77.9 billion yuan. Additionally, through two employee stock ownership plans, CXMT has granted shares to 6,760 individuals, covering management talent, key business personnel, core technical staff, and frontline production employees—many of whom have become millionaires thanks to CXMT’s listing.

In addition to Hefei State-owned Assets and the founding team, all other shareholders of CXMT have also reaped substantial gains. Prior to the IPO, CXMT had 60 shareholders, including state-backed funds such as National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund II and National Adjustment Fund II, industrial capital giants like Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi, insurance capital providers such as China Life Investment and PICC Capital, and market-driven investment institutions including Yanchuang Capital, China Merchants Capital, and Hengxu Capital. During the IPO stage, CXMT received strong support from 30 strategic investors. Among them, the Alibaba group, through multiple rounds of financing and strategic allocations, collectively holds over 3 billion shares, representing approximately 4.51% of the equity, with a market value nearing RMB 150 billion on the first day of listing.

On the eve of its listing on July 27, ChangXin Memory Technologies hosted a pre-listing thank-you reception in Shanghai titled “A Decade of Forging, A New Dawn Ahead.” According to attendees, over 300 guests, including strategic investors and industry partners, were present. Zhu Yiming reflected on ChangXin’s entrepreneurial journey, noting the vast technological gap the company faced at its inception compared to global giants. He credited sustained long-term capital support and relentless efforts by domestic and international engineering teams for achieving the breakthrough of large-scale DRAM production in mainland China, and expressed gratitude to the shareholders who had supported the company patiently over the past decade.

“The atmosphere at the dinner was vibrant, with many shareholders in attendance. Everyone fully recognized ChangXin’s development achievements over the past decade of relentless effort, expressed confidence in the company’s future growth potential, and looked forward to its performance in the capital markets after its listing,” said a guest at the dinner, speaking to Caijing.

Hefei’s state-owned capital support model—characterized by long-term partnership, early-stage investment in hard technology, and industrial synergy—serves as a benchmark for how local state capital can foster the development of hard tech. It closely aligns with the current emphasis in China’s capital markets on fostering a virtuous cycle of “technology-industry-capital,” thereby supporting technological innovation and advancing the logic of high-quality economic growth through capital markets,” said Professor Zhou Chunsheng, Professor of Finance at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business and Deputy Dean of its Executive Education Program, speaking to Caixin. Hefei’s state capital, with the core goal of achieving technological self-reliance, is willing to accompany companies through their entire industrial lifecycle; this kind of “patient capital” is the most scarce resource for hard tech enterprises.

Guoshou Investment began its positioning in 2020 when the industry was at a cyclical low, with an A-round post-investment valuation of just over RMB 30 billion; over the years, this investment has delivered highly impressive returns. We have consistently aligned with national industrial policies and technological support initiatives by establishing innovation technology funds and dual-carbon technology funds, focusing primarily on hard technology sectors. Investing in CXMT can be seen as the starting point of this trend, and the entire insurance and financial industry has now fully recognized and proactively shifted toward supporting the development of hard technologies,” said a Guoshou Investment insider familiar with the matter to Caijing, noting Guoshou Investment’s participation in CXMT’s A-round financing in 2020.

ChangXin Memory Technologies has been able to establish itself and grow into China's leading and the world's fourth-largest domestic DRAM chip manufacturer, thanks to support from its pre-IPO shareholders during multiple rounds of financing, particularly the Hefei state-owned capital, which held the earliest and largest stake.

“Memory chips are a typical capital-intensive, technology-intensive, and long-cycle industry, requiring substantial upfront investment and a prolonged ramp-up to mass production. It is extremely difficult to bear the full cycle risk from zero to one with short-term capital alone. During ChangXin’s development, Hefei’s state-owned assets played a role not just in providing funding, but more importantly in delivering long-term, continuous capital support, while coordinating financing, talent, and industrial chain resources to help the company navigate the early construction and mass production ramp-up phases,” said Yang Guang, Founding Partner of Yaotu Capital, to Caixin.

Reviewing the founding history of CXMT, on June 13, 2016, Hefei Investment, under Hefei’s state-owned assets, invested RMB 14.4 billion, while GigaDevice, led by Zhu Yiming, invested RMB 3.6 billion, totaling RMB 18 billion as the initial capital for CXMT’s Phase I factory construction, officially establishing CXMT. Subsequently, Hefei’s state-owned assets continued to provide funding support after CXMT’s establishment, enabling the company to invest heavily in DRAM chip research and development and capacity expansion. As of after its IPO, Hefei’s state-owned assets, through multiple entities—including Hefei Qinghui Jidian (holding 13.04 billion shares, 19.5%, largest shareholder), Hefei CXMT Integrated (holding 7.048 billion shares, 10.54%, second-largest shareholder), Hefei CTT No.1 (holding 1.111 billion shares, 1.66%, seventh-largest shareholder), Hefei Jianchang Equity (holding 901.3 million shares, 1.35%, eleventh-largest shareholder), and Hefei CTT High-Growth (holding 38 million shares, 0.057%)—collectively hold approximately 22.138 billion shares of CXMT, accounting for roughly 33.1% of total equity, making it the largest shareholder behind CXMT.

With ChangXin Memory Technologies successfully completing its IPO, Hefei’s state-owned assets have finally reaped the rewards after a decade of support. Based on ChangXin’s closing price of RMB 49 per share on its first trading day, the market value of Hefei’s stake in ChangXin exceeds RMB 1 trillion, reaching RMB 1.08476 trillion.

Notably, according to official data, Hefei's annual GDP for 2025 is approximately RMB 1.421 trillion. This means that the return from a single investment in ChangXin Technology is roughly equivalent to 70% of Hefei’s annual GDP.

On the night of ChangXin Memory Technologies' listing, Hefei Investment Group, one of the three major platform companies under Hefei's state-owned assets, issued a statement expressing its support for the listing. Hefei Investment Group stated that in 2016, under the strategic deployment of the Hefei Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government, it invested in ChangXin Memory Technologies to help it grow into China’s largest, most technologically advanced, and most comprehensively positioned integrated dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) research, design, and manufacturing enterprise. Moving forward, Hefei Investment Group will continue to support ChangXin’s development and work together to establish Hefei as a globally influential hub for the integrated circuit industry.

“Hefei’s local state capital has entered ChangXin Technology with long-term, patient capital, accompanying the company’s journey from zero to one in hard technology, serving as a typical model of integrating local industrial investment with the national strategy for technological self-reliance,” said Miao Tianyi, Executive Partner of Puzhu Capital, to Caijing. By moving beyond short-term financial returns, local state capital focuses on building regional industrial clusters and ensuring supply chain security, assuming the early-stage risks of capital-intensive, long-cycle, and highly loss-making memory manufacturing—addressing the shortcomings of market-driven financial capital, which is often unwilling to invest or unable to endure the prolonged R&D ramp-up. However, this model demands extremely high capabilities in local fiscal management and industrial analysis.

The core of Hefei’s state-owned capital model lies in abandoning short-term profit-seeking thinking and acting as a “patient capital” to accompany companies through high-risk phases such as technological R&D and production scaling. Unlike simple financial bailouts, Hefei precisely selects industry sectors, integrates industrial chain resources, and provides phased, dynamic funding—ensuring capital efficiency while avoiding administrative interference in market pricing. “The key to this model’s success,” said Tian Lihui, Dean of the Institute of Financial Development at Nankai University, “is positioning state capital as a ‘strategic investor’ rather than a controlling shareholder, respecting corporate market-oriented operations while amplifying technology spillover effects through industrial synergy.”

However, experts from all sides have also cautioned that Hefei's state-owned investment model cannot be easily replicated.

It is necessary for local state-owned capital to support hard technology, but this model requires several prerequisites. Governments are better suited to act as patient capital providers and organizers of industrial ecosystems, while technical pathways, products, and operational decisions must still be entrusted to professional teams and validated by customers and the market. Whether this model can be replicated depends not on copying funding and policies, but on whether the region has an industrial foundation, professional decision-making capabilities, aligned talent reserves, and the ability to accompany companies through market cycles. Otherwise, it may devolve into homogenized investment drives and redundant construction,” said Yang Guang.

Tian Lihui also warned of the risks of blindly copying Hefei’s model, emphasizing that hard tech investments must align with local industrial foundations and professional analytical capabilities. Without technical understanding and well-designed exit mechanisms, investors risk falling into a “invest but never exit” trap. Hefei’s experience shows that local state-owned capital should act as “architects” of industrial ecosystems, not merely as passive funders.

Zhou Chunsheng also believes that, despite its many advantages, the Hefei model is extremely difficult to replicate. Investment carries risks; if failures result in losses, how should accountability be defined? If due diligence and error-tolerance mechanisms are inadequate, it will be difficult to cultivate state-owned investors willing to take risks—yet overemphasizing error tolerance may inevitably lead to moral hazard.

“The Hefei model began with BOE and lasted for a decade. Most local governments find it difficult to persist with the same initiative for ten years—it’s not simply a matter of spending money, making it hard for other regions to replicate. In the future, urban industrial development will diverge, with cities that have stronger foundations becoming even more powerful,” an investment banker told Caixin.

In fact, although the ChangXin project was initiated with strong support from Hefei’s state-owned assets, as a capital-intensive industry in memory chips that requires continuous funding—especially during the industry’s cyclical downturn in its early years when widespread losses occurred across the sector—support from Hefei’s state-owned assets alone was insufficient to enable this domestic chip manufacturing initiative to succeed. ChangXin’s successful listing on the capital market was made possible only through the backing of dozens of institutions and industrial investors in its subsequent financing rounds.

It is understood that from the start of its angel round in 2018 to its final financing round before its IPO in June 2025, ChangXin Technology completed nine financing rounds over eight years, raising a total of tens of billions of yuan. Prior to its IPO, ChangXin Technology had 60 shareholders, including state-backed funds such as National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund II and China Reform Fund II, industrial investors like Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi, insurance capital providers such as China Life Investment and PICC Capital, and market-driven investment firms including Yanchuang Capital, Jishi Capital, and Hengxu Capital.

Notably, most of the pre-IPO funding for CXMT came from state-owned capital institutions. “In the early stages of CXMT’s fundraising, many state-backed institutions responded to the national call to invest in hard technology and firmly entered the company even when it was still operating at a loss. Looking back now, the results have proven that those investments were entirely correct,” said an industry insider to Caijing.

In 2020, China Life Investment, a subsidiary of China Life Insurance, participated in the Series A financing of CXMT. As of the IPO, China Life Investment held 476 million shares of CXMT, accounting for 0.79% of the total shares prior to the IPO. A China Life Investment insider familiar with the situation told Caixin: “Even our most optimistic projections at the time fell far short of the current success—based on today’s market price, this investment has generated nearly a 50-fold return.”

Regarding the background of the investment in CXMT at that time, a representative from China Life Investment told Caijing, “At the time, the state had clearly articulated policies to support finance in serving the real economy, with hard technology sectors becoming a key focus for support. Domestically, the semiconductor industry was in its early stages of development, from zero to one, and the demand for industrial self-reliance and control was particularly strong. Companies in China capable of tackling DRAM chip technology were extremely scarce. CXMT, with strong support from the Hefei municipal government, had been operating stably for four years, accumulating solid technical expertise and mass production experience, thoroughly validated by the market. The enormous demand for domestic substitution, combined with industry development opportunities, solidified our confidence in the investment.”

“In 2021, amid the long-standing dominance of international giants in the DRAM market and an uncertain future for domestic semiconductor self-reliance, we decisively chose to make a major investment in CXMT, committing 1.32 billion yuan with support from state-owned capital at the Ningbo district and county levels and local private capital—this was the largest investment our company has ever made,” said Guo Chengwei, partner and investment lead at Ningbo Yanchuang, who participated in CXMT’s Series B financing round, speaking to Caijing. “Our confidence in this decision stemmed from our strong recognition of CXMT’s pioneering role in achieving the historic breakthrough of developing domestic DRAM from nothing.”

When asked about the specific reasons for investing in CXMT, Guo Chengwei provided four points: First, the DRAM chip market has vast potential. Second, CXMT is one of the few domestic companies to achieve mass production of general-purpose DRAM, presenting significant opportunities for domestic substitution, further enhanced by support from national and local industrial capital—aligning with its long-term investment strategy in hard technology. Third, CXMT possesses robust technical capabilities and industrialization strength, with a clear commercialization pathway. Fourth, the company’s governance structure is well-designed, and its management team is highly capable; supported by Hefei’s state-owned assets and the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, a core team led by Zhu Yiming has established a governance framework that effectively combines government backing with market-oriented operations, achieving an excellent balance between industrial guidance and market mechanisms.

In 2021, China Merchants Capital, which participated in CXMT’s Series B financing, made a strategic investment in CXMT and supported the company in overcoming key technologies and accelerating capacity expansion through continuous capital and industrial resource empowerment. China Merchants Capital will work alongside CXMT to drive the expansion of its advanced production capacity and advance research and development of next-generation memory technologies, continuously strengthening CXMT’s competitive position in the global industry.

Huian Securities’ private equity subsidiary, Huian Jiaye, invested in CXMT through a combination of direct investment via a dedicated fund and a fund-of-funds approach. The company stated, “Huian Jiaye, grounded in the national strategy for semiconductor self-reliance and Anhui’s local industrial cluster advantages, has provided long-term support to CXMT to help it navigate industry cycles—strongly advancing the breakthrough of China’s domestic DRAM industry while simultaneously realizing dual returns in both fund value and industrial value.”

Related industrial capital along the upstream and downstream supply chain of ChangXin Technology has also invested in ChangXin Technology.

Among them, the Alibaba group is one of the largest external investors in ChangXin Memory Technologies. Through Alibaba Cloud, it invested RMB 6.1 billion at a price of RMB 2.63 per share in the final Pre-IPO financing round, making it the largest industrial investor in that round. After the IPO, Alibaba Cloud held 2.319 billion shares, representing a 3.47% stake, making it the sixth-largest shareholder of ChangXin; meanwhile, Alibaba Network held 676 million shares, accounting for a 1.01% stake. Additionally, the Alibaba group participated in the strategic placement of ChangXin’s IPO through Alibaba Cloud’s Feitian, securing 18 million shares. In total, the Alibaba group holds 3.013 billion shares, representing approximately 4.51% of the company’s equity. Based on the closing price of RMB 49 per share on the first day of trading, the market value of Alibaba group’s holdings amounts to RMB 147.6 billion.

“JSMC is the only new DRAM manufacturer in the past decade globally to achieve large-scale mass production, breaking the technological monopoly of overseas firms. Its technological scarcity, combined with the synergistic value of automotive-grade storage and the intelligent vehicle industry chain, forms the core rationale behind Hengxu’s substantial investment,” said Hengxu Capital, which participated in JSMC’s Series B financing in 2021. Hengxu Capital is a private equity investment institution established by SAIC Motor (a state-owned enterprise) through market-oriented reform.

Entering the IPO stage, ChangXin Technology received strong support from 30 strategic investors, with lock-up periods ranging from 12 to 36 months. Among them, the state-backed investors, including 36 products under the National Social Security Fund Council, subscribed for RMB 7.5 billion, while the China National Advanced Industry Fund Phase II subscribed for RMB 1 billion, bringing the total state-backed investment to RMB 7.6 billion—accounting for more than half of the total strategic allocation. Major insurance institutions such as PICC Property & Casualty, China Life Insurance, China Post Life Insurance, and Taikang Life also participated. ChangXin’s strategic investors also include multiple industry partners such as AMEC, Tiejing Technology,澜起科技 (Memblaze), and Shanghai Silicon Industry. Downstream end-market strategic partners also joined, including internet companies like Alibaba Cloud’s Flying Heaven, Shanghai Haoyu Information (Tencent), and Shenzhen Sankuai Network (Meituan); consumer electronics firms such as Wuhan 1810 (Xiaomi) and Transsion Holdings; and automotive companies including NIO Power and Chery Automobile.

Among them, NIO Power subscribed to RMB 158 million, with a lock-up period of 18 months. It is understood that NIO’s manufacturing facility is also located in Hefei, just a few hundred meters from the ChangXin Technology plant, and NIO is a foundational strategic partner of ChangXin Technology. The two parties will collaborate strategically on existing automotive-grade LPDDR4X and LPDDR5X products. On the evening of July 26, NIO’s founder, Li Bin, attended the pre-IPO thank-you banquet hosted by ChangXin Technology, where he commented on the collaboration: “The cooperation is progressing smoothly and supports the stability of NIO’s supply chain.”

In addition to Hefei’s state-owned assets and other investors, another key shareholder group behind ChangXin Technology is the founding team led by Zhu Yiming. Despite the company’s dispersed equity structure with no actual controller, they hold primary operational control.

Prior to the IPO, ten directors and senior executives, including Zhu Yiming, collectively held 2.012 billion shares, each holding more than 3.8 million shares.

According to the prospectus, Chexin Technology implemented two employee stock ownership plans prior to its listing. In the second plan, the board of directors of Chexin Technology granted Zhu Yiming 1.536 billion shares in recognition of his contributions to the development of China’s domestic DRAM industry over a decade, at a grant price of just RMB 0.108 per unit of registered capital.

Among them, Zhu Yiming holds a total of 1.59 billion shares, company director, president, and core technical staff Cao Kanyu holds 212 million shares, and executive vice president Zhu Wenju holds 53 million shares; these three individuals rank first, second, and third in shareholding volume. Based on the closing price of 49 yuan per share on the first day of listing, the total market value of shares held by these ten individuals is nearly RMB 98.6 billion, with Zhu Yiming’s personal share value reaching RMB 77.9 billion. Meanwhile, Zhu Yiming has voluntarily committed to allocating 768 million shares he holds for employee incentives within ten calendar years after the third anniversary of Changxin Technology’s listing, to motivate the company’s core personnel.

Public records show that Zhu Yiming graduated from the Department of Physics at Tsinghua University in 1997. After graduation, he moved to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the State University of New York, followed by a career in semiconductor memory chip development in Silicon Valley. In 2005, Zhu returned to China and founded GigaDevice, a memory chip design company. In 2016, with support from Hefei’s state-owned capital, he established CXMT. In 2018, he stepped down as General Manager of GigaDevice to focus fully on the development of CXMT.

At the time of CXMT's founding, China's DRAM industry was nonexistent. Meanwhile, global giants Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology had already entered mass production of 10-nanometer-class DRAM, while CXMT could only begin with outdated technology frameworks left behind by Qimonda, resulting in a technological gap of more than two generations. Under Zhu Yiming’s leadership, CXMT chose not to follow a gradual iterative approach, but instead adopted a “leapfrog R&D” strategy, directly achieving mass production on a fourth-generation process technology platform.

The success of the ChangXin project, beyond favorable conditions such as the opportunity for domestic substitution, hinges critically on people. The entrepreneurial spirit embodied by Zhu Yiming has been vital to ChangXin’s development—whether in strategic vision, dedication, or pivotal strategic decisions at critical junctures, all of which profoundly influenced ChangXin’s rapid initiation and growth. “In the early stages of ChangXin’s development, Zhu Yiming placed great emphasis on intellectual property, leveraging IP from Qimonda as a foundation and proactively securing a large number of defensive patents—a crucial step,” said a representative from China Life Investment, speaking to Caixin. He also assembled a highly experienced technical team and successfully retained these talents in Hefei—an achievement that is exceptionally difficult. These professionals chose to stay largely due to Zhu Yiming’s personal influence and leadership. Sustained investment in talent acquisition and cultivation, along with continuous attraction of top-tier industry talent, has been a key reason for the company’s success.

“They are extremely resilient, with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and passion. Most of the core team members have spent many years deeply immersed in the industry, consistently working on the front lines and specializing in DRAM technology development and mass production. Their ability to remain steadfast during industry downturns is rare, making them a mature startup team that combines technical expertise, hands-on dedication, and strategic vision,” said a representative from China Life Investment to Caijing.

Guo Chengwei also told Caijing that the management team of CXMT is impressive. First, they demonstrate a deep sense of industrial patriotism and a commitment to long-termism, diligently focusing on developing domestic memory technology without being swayed by short-term gains, showing remarkable resolve. Second, they possess strong professional capabilities, with core members bringing extensive global semiconductor industry experience and expertise in technology R&D, factory operations, and market expansion. Third, they are pragmatic and candid, with a broad perspective, objectively assessing challenges and risks, placing high importance on talent incentives, and effectively aligning the core team. At the same time, they maintain a clear-minded mindset as a determined follower, steadily building their technology and business foundations—making them a truly “strategic” industrial team worthy of long-term partnership.

Notably, as Hefei’s state-owned assets, founder team led by Zhu Yiming, and dozens of institutional investors supported ChangXin’s successful listing, the issue of the company having no actual controller has drawn public attention. Yuan Yuan, Vice President and Secretary of the Board of ChangXin, mentioned during the listing roadshow that after the listing, the company’s equity structure will become further dispersed, with the top five shareholders each holding no more than 30% of the shares, and no single shareholder holding more than 50%. The company will continue to maintain a control structure with no actual controller after the listing.

Who ultimately decides the future direction of CXMT? According to available information, the Hefei State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and the Hefei Economic and Technological Development Zone State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, as CXMT’s largest investors, primarily act as financial investors and have both stated they do not seek actual control over Hefei Qinghui Jidian or CXMT. Meanwhile, Zhu Yiming, although the executive partner of Hefei Qinghui Jidian, does not exercise actual control over the company.

ChangXin's status as a company without a controlling shareholder is closely related to the rights check-and-balance arrangements with its largest shareholder, Hefei Qinghui Jidian Partnership. ChangXin has stated that these rights check-and-balance mechanisms align with the investment philosophy of Hefei’s two local state-owned platforms, which prioritize technological self-reliance rather than seeking control, while also reflecting a strong emphasis on granting operational autonomy to the management team.

Zhou Chunsheng told Caijing that Changxin Technology’s governance structure—“no actual controller, with state capital and the founding team exercising checks and balances”—represents an innovative model for state capital participation in large-scale hard tech enterprises, fundamentally balancing the strategic objectives of state capital with operational autonomy of the founding team. Zhou summarized the advantages of this balance mechanism as follows: state capital provides support through resources, credibility, and strategic backing instead of administrative intervention, while the founding team retains full control over technology and operations; this approach firmly establishes state capital as a “stabilizing anchor” while activating market-driven “original momentum,” thereby avoiding the efficiency losses common in traditional state-owned enterprises.

Miao Tianyi told Caijing that the above model has four advantages: First, strategic authority and operational authority are separated; state capital anchors industrial security and large-scale investment without interfering in daily operations or technology pathways, ensuring the founding team’s leadership and avoiding short-term political performance pressures on long-cycle R&D; second, a multi-layered partnership structure prevents any single entity from controlling the voting rights of the largest shareholder, curbing unilateral interference and enhancing market-oriented governance; third, risks and returns are aligned—state capital bears the risk at the bottom of the cycle, while management ties its performance to long-term equity returns, creating a shared-risk, shared-reward framework; fourth, it is compliant with IPO requirements, clearly defining the boundaries of state capital’s rights and responsibilities while balancing asset preservation and appreciation with the market-oriented operation of science and technology enterprises.

However, this mechanism also carries risks. Zhou Chunsheng summarized that the storage industry has characteristics such as strong cyclicality, and operational decisions requiring rapid responses—such as price adjustments and capacity allocation—are hindered by multi-party consensus mechanisms, potentially leading to missed opportunities. During industry downturns, this inefficiency in decision-making becomes even more pronounced. In the future, as the industry matures, conflicts may arise between state-owned capital’s goals of value preservation and growth, and industrial security concerns, versus management teams’ focus on market expansion and short-term performance. This balance of power risks evolving into internal friction, undermining governance stability.

In Miao Tianyi’s view, a structure without a controlling shareholder lacks a central defense mechanism against hostile takeovers and external capital博弈, relying instead on long-term mutual understanding among all parties; the diverse interests of multiple stakeholders increase the cost of long-term coordination; and the complex, layered ownership structure makes equity transparency and clear assignment of responsibilities more difficult.

This article is from the WeChat public account "Read the Numbers" (ID: dushuyizhi007), authored by Kang Guoliang and Zhang Jianfeng.