Baiwei Storage's Parent-Child High-Stakes Gamble: Billions Locked in AI Storage Orders

Why can AI Sun family’s reverse big gamble hit the AI cycle?

The “life-and-death lock-up” of the AI cycle.

Investor Network Cai Jun

In March, the storage leader on the STAR Market, Beiwei Storage (688525.SH, hereinafter referred to as “the company”), threw a “deep water bomb.”

According to the announcement, the company signed a $1.5 billion (about 10.37B RMB) long-term procurement contract with an overseas storage manufacturer, locking in supply of storage wafers for the next 24 months. The transaction amount nearly matches the company’s total revenue for 2025, instantly bringing this Shenzhen enterprise, which just reached a trillion market cap, into the spotlight.

The day after the announcement, the company’s total market value exceeded 120 billion RMB, stabilizing in the trillion-yuan club. The market’s enthusiasm is a vote with real money for this super order: this is not ordinary inventory buildup, but an ultimate bet on the super cycle of AI storage.

Super order: not stockpiling, but the “life-and-death lock-up” of the AI cycle

Beiwei’s contract, in both scale and determination, is rare in the industry.

On one hand, the $1.5 billion amount is evenly executed over 8 quarters, averaging about 5.15 billion RMB in procurement annually. On the other hand, the annual procurement volume accounts for 11.1% of NAND total procurement and 18.01% of total sales in 2025, essentially locking in the company’s core capacity.

More strikingly, from a leverage perspective, as of 2025, the company’s cash and equivalents are only 1.74 billion RMB. During the same period, the super order led the bank credit line to be increased from 15 billion to 20 billion RMB.

Essentially, this is a thorough restructuring of the global storage industry’s AI super cycle: it’s no longer a traditional supply-demand fluctuation every 3–5 years, but a structural supply-demand adjustment triggered by the computing power revolution.

By 2025, about 70% of the world’s advanced capacity will be diverted by Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron to HBM and AI server DRAM, severely squeezing general NAND/DRAM supply. TrendForce data shows: NAND contract prices in Q4 2025 will rise by 33%–38% quarter-on-quarter, DRAM by 45%–50%; in Q1 2026, NAND will surge over 90%, DRAM over 50%. Industry inventory is only 4 weeks, far below the 8–12 weeks safety line, making it normal that money can’t buy the goods.

In other words, AI servers are “swallowing” storage capacity. A single AI server uses DRAM eight times more than traditional servers, and NAND three times more. On the supply side: overseas giants “prefer high, abandon low,” with leading manufacturers shifting over 80% of their advanced capacity to high-margin tracks like HBM, creating a 20% supply gap in consumer, industrial, and edge AI storage.

Therefore, the company’s super order precisely targets this core contradiction. On one side, it locks in a two-year purchase price, fully avoiding the risk of continuous price increases and stabilizing gross profit margins. On the other side, AI clients demand extremely high delivery certainty, and a long-term order is essentially a high-end order ticket.

Market investors see this very clearly: the company is using assets as collateral, betting that the AI cycle will last at least two more years. In other words, locking in scarce capacity early is a move to squeeze out small and medium competitors amid industry reshuffling and accelerate consolidation.

Two generations of “reverse big gamble”: from OEM trade to AI leader

From a trader selling hard drives in Shenzhen in 1995 to a global storage solution provider positioning in the AI edge today. The two-generation gamble of Beiwei’s controlling family is a microcosm of China’s storage industry’s shift from OEM followership to AI cycle breakout.

Born in the 1960s, Sun Rixin graduated from Southwest Jiaotong University’s computer science department, securing a “iron rice bowl” at the First Design Institute of the Ministry of Railways. In 1995, he resolutely resigned and moved south to Shenzhen, founding BIWIN (Beiwei), starting with hard drive and floppy disk trading, earning his first fortune.

In 1999, Sun Rixin moved beyond pure trading, establishing factories for flash memory and graphics card OEM; in 2000, he entered ODM, establishing cooperation with Intel, Micron, Samsung. The key leap came in 2008, when the industry was in dire straits, with major firms cutting production and laying off staff. Sun Rixin invested countercyclically in wafer testing and packaging factories.

This “risky move” proved correct. Sun Rixin thus connected the “wafer—packaging—finished product” full chain, with 8/12-inch wafer testing and packaging capabilities, far surpassing pure OEM/trading firms in cycle resilience. Beiwei Storage was officially founded in 2010; in 2011, it entered SSDs, capturing 11% of the global flash drive market, becoming one of China’s largest storage OEMs.

Fundamentally, this is Sun Rixin’s “engineer’s pragmatic approach + reverse cycle layout + heavy asset barriers” at work, transforming a trading company into a vertically integrated storage powerhouse.

In 2012, Sun Rixin’s son, Sun Chengsi, returned from studying abroad. Since then, he took over as general manager and chairman, initiating a “capitalization + high-end + AI” three-stage leap.

On one hand, the company listed on the STAR Market, leveraging capital to expand R&D and build advanced packaging/testing. On the other hand, it strengthened “R&D and packaging/testing integration 2.0,” deploying wafer-level advanced packaging/testing. This is a core barrier for AI storage and key to SK Hynix’s dominance in HBM.

Thus, the company shifted tracks, decisively moving from consumer SSDs and eMMCs to AI edge storage (AI glasses, edge computing, smart wearables), deeply binding with top clients like Meta.

From the father’s countercyclical expansion to the son’s hundred-billion lock-in, this is a genetic inheritance of reverse heavy positions and cycle betting—only Sun Chengsi’s gamble is bigger, with higher leverage and a more turbulent era.

Lingering concerns

Beiwei Storage’s 2025 financial report is a textbook example of cycle reversal, but behind the dazzling data, risks remain.

During the reporting period, the company’s revenue was 11.3B RMB, with net profit attributable to shareholders of 853 million RMB, up 68.8% and 429.07%, respectively. Quarterly, net profit in Q4 was 823 million RMB. It’s important to note that the surge was not due to a sharp increase in sales volume but mainly driven by soaring storage prices and inventory revaluation. With wafer prices continuing to skyrocket in 2025, the company’s inventory appreciated significantly, combined with product price hikes, leading to instant profit release.

However, there are also concerns: high inventory, cash outflows, and high leverage.

During the period, inventory reached 7.87B RMB, up 122.44% year-on-year. In a super cycle, inventory is a profit reservoir, but if the cycle turns and prices peak and fall, massive impairments could wipe out profits.

Moreover, during the period, operating cash flow was negative 1.97B RMB, down 469.6% year-on-year. The market believes the company’s funds are flowing into large-scale inventory buildup, R&D, and expansion. R&D expenses were 632 million RMB, up 41.3%. In other words, profits are staying on the books and in warehouses, not converting into cash.

Finally, the company still relies on high leverage to leverage future dividends. During the period, long-term borrowings increased from 928 million RMB to 2.67B RMB, a 187.27% increase.

Ultimately, this super order is a concentrated realization of the two generations’ cycle wisdom and a key move for China’s domestic storage breakthrough in the AI era. By 2026, with AI computing power still surging, storage prices soaring, and cycle benefits still being released, if AI edge devices continue to explode and prices stay high for two years, Beiwei could break through 20 billion RMB in revenue and 3 billion RMB in net profit, securing a top position in global AI storage.

But cycles are always a double-edged sword; there are no eternal winners in business—only respect for cycles and control of risks. Therefore, this father-son relay gamble has only just entered the second half. What do you think about the company’s bold gamble? Feel free to leave comments and discuss below. (Produced by Think Finance)