Big five cities bet big! Revenue soars by 554%, Tsinghua couple partners for IPO

Ask AI · How Tsinghua Couple’s Tech and Business Team Breaks Through the Chip Bottleneck Challenge?

“The IPO Full Observation” column focuses on companies making their initial public offerings, reporting entrepreneurs’ startup experiences and success stories, analyzing business models and operational performance, and revealing the investment support from VC, CVC, and other capital parties.

Author | Barry

Editor | Wu Yan

Image Source | midjourney

It seems that the Tsinghua couple team is sparking a wave of IPO enthusiasm.

In March, Kalesi Technology successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with Tsinghua alumni Gu Chunguang and Yang Yan, a married couple, ringing the bell together; similarly, Tsinghua-born Zhuang Li and Zhou Feng’s Magnesium Shareholding also submitted their listing application to HKEX.

Recently, another Tsinghua couple team is rushing toward IPO. Zhongyin Microelectronics ( Beijing ) Co., Ltd. officially submitted its listing application to the HKEX Main Board, with Ping An Securities ( Hong Kong ) as the exclusive sponsor.

This semiconductor company took only five years from establishment to filing, a speed almost unimaginable in China’s semiconductor industry a decade ago — it has completed a journey that would have taken over ten years for its peers. Based on 2025 chip design and delivery revenue, Zhongyin Microelectronics ranks second among domestic custom chip service providers; based on 2025 AI ASIC revenue, it is third domestically, making it a dark horse in the AI chip race.

Behind this company is a gathering of many well-known investment institutions. Before the IPO, Beijing state-owned platform — Cornerstone Venture Capital — held 4.5% of shares, making it the largest external institutional investor; followed by Guotou Bay Area Fund and Hongtai Fund; it also attracted industry giants like Huawei Hubble, SAIC’s Shangqi Capital, and Unicom Venture Capital, with heavy investments from Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and other local state-owned platforms.

This leapfrogging growth directly taps into the industry dividends brought by the explosive AI large models. Cloud-based large model training drives a surge in computing power demand, while large-scale deployment of edge and endpoint AI scenarios also raises higher requirements for chip efficiency and scene adaptability. Compared to general-purpose GPUs, ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits), with their customized architecture, achieve better performance, energy efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, becoming the core carriers for large-scale AI deployment, directly fueling the continuous surge in demand for AI ASIC custom services.

Under this trend, Zhongyin Microelectronics has anchored itself in the AI ASIC track since its inception, creating a full-chain service model of “IP licensing + chip design + chip delivery,” to build customized “computing power cores” for AI large models and high-performance computing scenarios.

Behind this domestic chip breakthrough story are Tsinghua alumni couple Wang Hongpeng and Zhang Dongqing — one deeply involved in technology, the other managing business — jointly pioneering in the “bottleneck” field of chips.

Foreign Executive Resigns to Start Business

Forming a “Technology + Business” Couple Team

In February 2021, Zhongyin Microelectronics was officially launched as a major introduced project in Pukou District, Nanjing, incubated by Tsinghua-affiliated Linghua Integrated Circuit Technology Research Institute. Its birth was not only an inevitable era of domestic semiconductor industry substitution but also a personal choice long contemplated by founder Wang Hongpeng.

Wang Hongpeng is an alumnus of Tsinghua University, Class of 1999, in Electronic Engineering. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronic Science and Technology and a master’s in Electronics and Communication Engineering, with over 19 years of experience in advanced process IC design and high-end IP development.

After graduating from Tsinghua, he started his career at Silicon Image Inc., a top U.S. semiconductor company, beginning as a frontline R&D engineer, specializing in system architecture, chip design, and verification, for nearly a decade. Returning to China, he served as Director of System Architecture and Chip Verification at Shanghai Lattice Semiconductor, responsible for FPGA IP development and full-process SoC system architecture — a rare technical expert with both overseas advanced technology vision and domestic industry implementation experience.

His smooth career progression in foreign companies, however, led Wang Hongpeng into a deep professional dilemma.

" The biggest problem is the lack of control over my own future. As long as I work for others, following someone else’s strategic plan and direction, I can’t have my own core strategy and output."

At that time, China’s semiconductor industry was at a critical breakthrough stage, with IP as the core underlying technology of chip design, but the domestic substitution rate was less than 5%, and high-end markets were almost monopolized by Western companies. This industry anxiety and personal career ideals collided, prompting him to make a decisive choice: resign and start a business, to forge a path for Chinese enterprises in core chip technology.

At the end of 2020, Wang Hongpeng officially launched his startup. In 2021, Zhongyin Microelectronics settled in Nanjing, but the startup journey was far more difficult than he imagined.

Transitioning from a senior executive at a U.S. firm to a startup founder, he faced a huge gap: the new company had no reputation, no resources — not to mention securing top industry clients, even recruiting core talents was a challenge.

More severely, the company faced a capacity crisis in its first year; in 2022, the entire industry entered a downturn cycle, with market shrinkage, leaving Zhongyin Microelectronics vulnerable.

But Wang Hongpeng was not defeated by these adversities. The teachings of his two mentors at Tsinghua became guiding stars on his entrepreneurial path.

Professor Wang Zhihua repeatedly told him: “No matter what industry you do, in the end, you will reach a no-man’s land. Only by continuously accumulating your abilities and understanding, and finding that path, can you become the strongest; in any field, you must strive to be at the top.” Professor Wei Shaojun’s industry judgment that “technological self-reliance must go hand in hand with internationalization” also shaped his long-term strategic planning.

Wang Hongpeng and his team quickly adjusted their mindset, adopting a development strategy of “recognize reality, do the most confident things first, then iterate gradually.” Relying on his decade-long industry network and reputation, he repeatedly explained the company’s technological value and industry prospects to upstream and downstream partners and financial institutions, ultimately securing bank loans and overcoming capacity issues.

While the entire industry was mired in a market downturn, Zhongyin Microelectronics achieved counter-cyclical growth thanks to its early technical layout.

On his entrepreneurial journey, Wang Hongpeng also found another key “accelerator” — the Tsinghua alumni Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. He participated three times, which not only enhanced the company’s technical credibility and market positioning, gaining industry recognition, but also helped him connect with many outstanding Tsinghua alumni entrepreneurs and investors, laying the groundwork for subsequent multiple rounds of financing.

Under his leadership, the then two-year-old Zhongyin Microelectronics delivered impressive results: nearly 1 billion yuan in orders, deep partnerships with many top industry clients, and recognition as a “Unicorn Cultivation Enterprise” by Nanjing in 2022. In just over two years, it completed five rounds of financing, attracting over a dozen well-known investment institutions.

This entrepreneurial breakthrough was not achieved alone. His wife, Zhang Dongqing, formed a “technology + business” golden couple team with him, becoming one of the core leaders pushing Zhongyin Microelectronics from zero to IPO.

Zhang Dongqing is also a Tsinghua alumna, earning her bachelor’s in Polymer Materials and Engineering in 2006, and later a master’s in Polymer Chemistry and Physics from Beijing Normal University.

Unlike Wang Hongpeng’s technical background, Zhang Dongqing has over ten years of experience in business operations and market expansion in Fortune 500 companies, having worked at Nippon Paint, Evonik Specialty Chemicals, and Bluestar Silicones, progressing from Asia-Pacific marketing manager to senior marketing manager, overseeing growth strategies, major negotiations, and M&A projects.

When Zhongyin Microelectronics was founded in 2021, she joined as General Manager, complementing Wang Hongpeng’s technical R&D focus with her expertise in overall business operations: managing market expansion, customer service, and supply chain, transforming technological advantages into commercial results.

This Tsinghua couple, one deep in technology, the other in business execution, together brought a Nanjing startup to the doorstep of HK stock IPO.

Multiple State-Owned Capital Piling In

Headquarters Moving to Beijing Before IPO

From the incubation project in Pukou, Nanjing, to now rushing toward IPO, Zhongyin Microelectronics’s growth path has been inseparable from the support of investment institutions.

According to Ruishou Analysis, Zhongyin Microelectronics has completed at least 7 funding rounds, raising nearly 800 million yuan in total. Investors include well-known VCs, leading industry capital, and state-owned platforms from Nanjing, Suzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, and more.

In October 2021, just eight months after its founding, Zhongyin Microelectronics secured several tens of millions of yuan in angel funding, led by Cornerstone Capital and Jinyu Maowu, with follow-on investments from Chongning Capital, Zhongyi Mingyuan, and others; in July 2022, it completed a multi-million yuan Pre-A round; in April 2023, it raised over 2.72B yuan in Series A, led by Hongtai Fund, with Jangji High-Tech and Zhuoyuan Capital participating; in September 2023, it closed nearly 100 million yuan in Series A+ funding, attracting industry capital like Shangqi Capital and Unicom Venture Capital; just before listing, in January 2026, the company completed a Series C round with 416 million yuan, post-investment valuation about 2.716 billion yuan, with a per-share cost of roughly 156.8 yuan.

Notably, in the early rounds, most investors were local state-owned funds from Nanjing and Jiangsu. After relocating headquarters to Beijing Yizhuang in 2025, the Series C funding in January 2026 was almost entirely from Beijing state-owned platforms, including Yizhuang State Investment Fund, Jingtou Fund, Beijing Sci-Tech Innovation Fund, Cornerstone Fund, and Beigong Investment. The previous local Jiangsu and Nanjing state-owned investors did not appear in this round.

In addition to strong support from multiple local state-owned capital, Zhongyin Microelectronics’s shareholder list also includes industry giants like Huawei, SAIC, and Unicom. Huawei, through its wholly owned Hubble Technology, holds indirect shares as a general partner of the Red Soil Fund.

Before IPO, Wang Hongpeng controls about 54.85% of voting rights through direct holdings, controlled entities, and related agreements.

Externally, Cornerstone Venture Capital (affiliated with Beijing Infrastructure Investment Co., Ltd.) holds 4.5%, making it the largest external institutional investor; Guotou Bay Area Fund holds 4.22%; Hongtai Fund holds 3.95%; Industry Upgrade Fund Phase II and Beijing New Infrastructure each hold around 3.68%; SAIC’s Shangqi HuiRong holds 2.12%; Unicom Venture Capital 1.59%; Red Soil Fund and Beijing Yizhuang each about 1.47%.

Regarding the use of funds raised from the Hong Kong IPO, Zhongyin Microelectronics clearly states four core directions in its prospectus: first, core technology R&D, focusing on next-generation high-speed data interface IP, high-speed storage interface IP, and chip interconnect IP to consolidate technological leadership; second, building an industrial chain ecosystem, strengthening cooperation with upstream and downstream partners to establish a secure, controllable closed-loop industrial ecosystem; third, global expansion, enlarging international business footprint and enhancing global brand recognition; fourth, replenishing working capital and general corporate purposes.

Revenue Soars 554% in Three Years

Benefits and Growing Pains of the Boom

It is well known that semiconductors are a typical long-cycle, R&D-intensive, high-barrier industry. Chip design companies often take many years from founding to IPO.

Compared to top peers in the same track, ChipX’s 19-year journey from 2001 to listing on the STAR Market; Can芯’s 16-year path; even industry speedster AoJie Technology took nearly 7 years. Yet Zhongyin Microelectronics, only five years from founding to HK listing, is almost unthinkable in China’s semiconductor industry a decade ago.

This leapfrog growth is largely due to the company riding the wave of AI large model explosions. The continuous surge in cloud-based large model training has driven explosive growth in computing power demand; simultaneously, large-scale deployment of edge and endpoint AI scenarios has imposed higher requirements on chip energy efficiency and scene adaptability.

In this context, ASICs, with their customized architectures, outperform general-purpose GPUs in performance, energy efficiency, and cost, becoming the key carriers for AI computing from lab to industry. This directly boosts the market demand for AI ASIC custom services, making it a core engine for the growth of the entire chip customization market.

According to data from Zhuoshi Consulting cited in the prospectus, China’s AI ASIC custom service market grew from 4.42 billion yuan in 2020 to an estimated 34.58 billion yuan in 2025, with a CAGR of 50.9%. By 2030, it is expected to surpass 200 billion yuan, reaching 205.73 billion yuan, maintaining a high CAGR of 42.9% from 2025 to 2030. Under the trend of domestic substitution, the domestic chip customization market is projected to grow from 9.35 billion yuan in 2025 to 46.38 billion yuan in 2030, with a CAGR of 37.8%, opening vast growth space for local manufacturers.

In 2025, domestic suppliers in China’s AI ASIC customization industry will generate revenue of 4.49 billion yuan. Based on AI ASIC revenue, Zhongyin Microelectronics ranks third among domestic suppliers, with a market share of 9.4%; the first place holds 33.7%, second 17.2%. In the broader Chinese chip customization market (including design and delivery services), Zhongyin ranks second with 426.6 million yuan in revenue, accounting for 8.8%, behind the leader with 32.1%.

From the start, Zhongyin Microelectronics has focused on the AI ASIC core track, building a platformed full-chain service model of “IP licensing + chip design + chip delivery,” to create customized “computing cores” for AI large models and high-performance computing scenarios.

In layman’s terms, traditional general-purpose GPUs often face data transfer bottlenecks and underutilized computing power during AI large model training. Zhongyin Microelectronics’s approach is to develop proprietary core IP to tailor-make AI chips (covering from 4nm to 28nm process nodes), solving data transfer issues and maximizing computing efficiency.

Looking at revenue structure, AI ASIC-related business has become Zhongyin’s core revenue base. In 2024 and 2025, this segment accounts for over 90% of total revenue, making it one of the most AI-focused companies in the same track domestically.

Specifically, chip design and chip delivery are the main revenue pillars. From 2023 to 2025, these two segments together account for 83.9%, 73.3%, and 91.0% of total revenue respectively. Among them, chip delivery’s revenue share grew fastest, from 28.8% in 2023 to 49.0% in 2025, becoming the largest revenue source; chip design contributed 42.0% in 2025; IP licensing contributed 9.0%.

Corresponding to this rapid business expansion, the company’s revenue scaled up dramatically. From 2023 to 2025, revenues were 74.8 million yuan, 348 million yuan, and 484 million yuan respectively, with 2024’s revenue soaring 364.63% year-on-year, and 2025 maintaining a high growth rate of 39.31%. Over three years, revenue increased more than fivefold.

Looking at customer composition, Zhongyin’s clients mainly include chip and system suppliers in AI, communications, and other sectors, purchasing its customized AI ASIC chips to solve data transfer bottlenecks and enable efficient large-scale AI chip clusters.

However, despite rapid growth, the company faces high customer concentration risk. The prospectus shows that in 2023, 2024, and 2025, the top five customers contributed 74.4%, 95.1%, and 78.3% of total revenue respectively; the largest customer’s contribution was as high as 81.5% in 2024, but dropped to 37.4% in 2025, indicating an improving customer structure.

Like most semiconductor startups, Zhongyin Microelectronics is still in the “high R&D, high growth, not yet profitable” stage. From 2023 to 2025, net losses were 98.43 million, 48.45 million, and 164 million yuan respectively. In 2024, losses narrowed by over 50%, but in 2025, losses expanded by 237.42% year-on-year.

The main reason for the widening losses is the company’s continued high R&D investment to strengthen technological barriers. Data shows that from 2023 to 2025, R&D expenses accounted for 121.5%, 50.5%, and 49.4% of total revenue respectively. Even in 2025, when revenue grew rapidly, R&D spending was nearly half of revenue, a relatively high level among domestic chip design firms.

Nevertheless, despite the fast pace, Zhongyin Microelectronics cannot avoid the objective gaps with leading domestic peers and the shortcomings exposed during growth.

In terms of scale, 2025 revenue of 484 million yuan is only 20.8% of ChipX’s revenue at the same time, 14.3% of AoJie Technology, and 44.4% of Can芯. This scale gap affects bargaining power in wafer procurement, packaging, and testing, making the company less resilient to industry cycles.

In terms of profitability, the company is still unprofitable, with losses expanding significantly in 2025. In contrast, Can芯 has achieved steady profitability, and ChipX and AoJie are narrowing losses supported by scale.

While the losses mainly stem from R&D investments, the efficiency of commercializing R&D and whether the company can turn scale into profit remains a core challenge.

Additionally, in the core IP area, Zhongyin’s IP matrix is less extensive than industry leaders with over a decade of experience. ChipX has built a large product matrix of six processor IP categories and over 1,600 mixed-signal IPs, providing comprehensive IP solutions. Zhongyin’s IP products are mainly focused on high-speed interfaces, with a narrower coverage.

Of course, under the dual wave of AI computing explosion and chip domestic substitution, this Tsinghua couple-led chip company has demonstrated in five years that rapid breakthrough in niche segments of domestic chips is possible.

This IPO is a major test — whether it can leverage the listing to address scale shortcomings and achieve profitability, and truly establish itself among international giants and top domestic peers, will be the key challenge for this Tsinghua couple after going public.

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