Longsys Electronics just pulled in about $903 million from its Hong Kong IPO, and founder Cai Huabo has a very specific plan for the cash: pour 78% of it into research and development for AI memory chips. That’s roughly $704 million earmarked for chip design and next-generation memory products.
The move marks Longsys’s formal pivot from being a memory module assembler to building its own semiconductor memory brand.
The numbers backing the bet
First-half 2026 revenue hit 24.1 billion yuan, up 136.3% year-over-year. Net profit for the same period reached 10.7 billion yuan, a more than 260-fold increase compared to the prior year.
The company, listed under ticker 301308.SZ, completed its Hong Kong listing on September 8, raising approximately HK$7.08 billion. Cai Huabo retains about 39% ownership of the firm through direct holdings and investment vehicles.
Longsys claims the title of the world’s second-largest independent memory product maker by revenue, trailing only integrated giants like Samsung and SK Hynix, and sits at the top of China’s independent memory segment.
Edge AI as the growth thesis
Longsys is targeting edge AI storage solutions: memory products designed to work at the point where AI inference actually happens, in devices, servers at the network edge, and industrial equipment. The company has launched products in this category including a Storage Processing Unit (SPU) controller and AIDIMM modules. The WM8500 SPU and DRAM-less PCIe Gen5 SSDs represent its latest offerings aimed at AI workloads.
Longsys has shipped more than 280 million units of its self-designed controller chips. Its technical stack spans controller design, firmware development, and system-in-package (SiP) packaging and testing, with manufacturing facilities in Suzhou, China, and an additional plant in Brazil.
Longsys acquired Lexar in 2017, giving it a consumer-facing brand to complement its Foresee and Zilia product lines.