A glimpse into storage companies intensively embracing the capital market.

Author: Lu Zhigao

Editor: Wang Qingwu

Manual Count: 90%   AI Content: 10%

Another storage company has gone public.

On November 12, led by the father-daughter duo Wu Yisheng and Wu Jiamin, the memory manufacturer Hongxinyu officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Established in Shenzhen in 2018, the company reached the capital market, and its market capitalization exceeded 35 billion Hong Kong dollars as soon as it opened.

Behind this, there is the presence of a semiconductor giant. As a founding shareholder of Hongxinyu, the Taiwan-based memory manufacturer Phison Electronics has accompanied the company through its growth to IPO.

The IPO of Hongxinyu is just a microcosm of recent storage companies intensively embracing the capital market. With the growing demand for AI and a new round of prosperity in the storage market, a number of companies are collectively racing towards IPO.

Father-daughter team leads to a super IPO in Shenzhen

The story of Hongxinyu begins with semiconductor veteran Wu Yisheng.

Before founding this company, he already had nearly 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. As early as 1999, while studying computer science, Wu Yisheng began to venture into the chip field, subsequently serving as general manager in electronic component distribution, chip design, and sales companies, and as a director at memory company Biwei Storage.

His long-term engagement in the industry allowed Wu Yisheng to accumulate rich industrial resources and also meet a key figure – Phison Electronics CEO Pan Jiancheng. Established in 2000, Phison Electronics has long engaged in the design, development, and supply of NAND Flash storage controllers and related storage solutions.

The long-standing relationship between the two eventually became an important starting point for the establishment of Hongxinyu. In December 2018, Wu Yisheng founded Hongxinyu in Shenzhen. At the company’s inception, Ru Yuan Investment, wholly owned by Phison Electronics, held a 40% stake, making it the second largest shareholder.

Alongside Wu Yisheng on this entrepreneurial path was his daughter, Wu Jiamin, born in the 1990s. Starting as a purchasing manager, then an assistant to the chairman, and later an executive director, she joined at the founding of Hongxinyu and gradually became involved in the company’s operations. Currently, she primarily assists her father in managing and coordinating the company's overall operations.

At the early stages of Hongxinyu, the concepts of self-control and domestic substitution were becoming increasingly important in China's semiconductor industry. Drawing on his industry experience and the partnership with Phison Electronics, Wu Yisheng focused the company's business on the development and application of storage products, choosing to start with storage control chips.

Simply put, control chips act like the "brain" of storage products, coordinating data interaction between the host and storage medium, achieving read-write scheduling, storage unit management, and protocol conversion, allowing storage media to be accessed by operating systems and applications in a standardized manner.

Focusing on critical industrial links, Hongxinyu gradually established a technology platform covering control chip design and development, firmware algorithm development, testing system development, and storage medium characterization analysis, while mainly outsourcing wafer processing, assembly, packaging, and testing to third parties.

This light asset operation model allows them to focus more resources on product research and development, customer needs, and supply chain integration. Embedded storage is Hongxinyu's core product, primarily applied in consumer electronics terminals such as smartphones, tablets, smart imaging devices, and wearable devices.

As the business developed, the company's product portfolio gradually expanded to include solid-state drives, DRAM, mobile storage, and storage chips. In addition to collaborations with companies like Xiaomi, Transsion, OPPO, vivo, and TCL, they also began to provide storage products for automotive applications starting in 2023.

With recognition from numerous customers, Hongxinyu's revenue increased by 28.9% year-on-year to 11.238 billion yuan in 2025, breaking the 10 billion yuan mark for the first time. The change in net profit is even more pronounced; not only did they turn a profit in 2024, but they also further increased by 182.5% to 1.364 billion yuan the following year.

This round of performance growth coincided with a new prosperity cycle in the storage market. After nearly eight years of development, Hongxinyu, led by Wu Yisheng and Wu Jiamin, has grown from a Shenzhen startup to a global memory manufacturer and has officially taken the stage on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Phison Electronics bets, market value exceeds 35 billion Hong Kong dollars

During Hongxinyu's development, capital has always played an important role.

For a memory manufacturer, transitioning a product from development to mass production requires continuous investment in technological R&D, the establishment of a stable supply chain system, and validation from downstream customers. With rapid revenue growth, the resources needed for R&D, supply chain, and market expansion have also increased accordingly.

The first financing after the establishment of Hongxinyu came from Phison Electronics. As a founding shareholder, Phison not only has technical expertise in the field of storage control chips but has also established a long-term business cooperation relationship with Hongxinyu and provided funding support for its subsequent development.

As they began to promote industrialization, institutions such as Zhongsheng Investment, Linglong Investment, and Anji Chunyu also joined in, bringing 36 million yuan in financing to Hongxinyu. By 2020, the company's annual revenue surpassed 100 million dollars, and with investments from Phison Electronics and others, its valuation exceeded 300 million dollars.

Immediately after, more investors became shareholders of Hongxinyu. In 2021, the company entered the supply chains of Transsion and OPPO, rapidly expanding revenue size. That year, institutions such as Shenzhen Investment Control, Shenzhen Hi-Tech Investment, and Guoyao Capital successively invested, raising their valuation past 700 million dollars.

With resource-rich investors continuously joining, Hongxinyu's R&D and business layout gradually expanded from Shenzhen to other cities. By 2022, the company entered the Xiaomi supply chain and became a national-level "little giant" specializing in new technologies. After receiving investments from SMIC Juyuan, Haixia Fund, Hefei Innovation Investment, Hefei Industrial Investment, and Kunqiao Capital, they jumped to become a unicorn.

As the customer structure continuously expands, the company's shareholder lineup is also growing.

Starting from November 2022, Hongxinyu completed two rounds of financing within half a year, with investors including Kunqiao Capital, Zhongxin Rongchuang, Guoyuan Innovation, and Anyi Dingtai. With support from Taiyi He, Huachuang Shenda, Guotong Zhaoxin, Dingxin Group, TCL Ventures, and Shanghai Longyu, their valuation ultimately exceeded 10 billion yuan.

Looking back, the logic behind these institutions' investments is becoming clearer. Initially, the capital entry coincided with Hongxinyu's product industrialization. Subsequently, as the company entered the supply chains of major smartphone manufacturers and expanded its revenue scale, financing valuations continuously increased.

When Hongxinyu began to expand into automotive, enterprise-level, and AI applications, its cross-application product development and commercialization capabilities, along with a large market space, provided new growth expectations for investors.

Out of recognition for Hongxinyu, investors such as Kungang Investment, Meige Intelligent, United Capital, Wanlian Guangsheng, Wanlian Tianze, Jiafa Venture Capital, Maosheng Investment, Jiaxing Qiuyang, Liansheng Yeke, Xiongshi Assets, Lianxin Capital, and Future Pafi chose to become their shareholders through buying existing shares.

In the process of continuous entry of investment institutions, existing shareholders also welcomed exit opportunities. In December 2024, Phison Electronics cashed out over 1.2 billion yuan. According to Phison's statements at that time, this equity adjustment aligns with its global operations and investment strategy in mainland China, and the related investment returns will mainly be used for the company’s headquarters R&D.

However, Phison Electronics remains Hongxinyu's second largest shareholder. Before the IPO, they held approximately 22.5% of the shares. If calculated roughly at a market value of 35 billion Hong Kong dollars, this stake corresponds to a book value of over 7.5 billion Hong Kong dollars. This substantial return once again showcases the significant value of investment to the outside world.

Storage companies queuing for IPO

As the storage sector welcomes a new round of IPO windows, a batch of storage companies is intensely rushing towards IPO.

Looking around, from the early year's Zhaoyi Innovation to now Hongxinyu, including Changxin Technology and others, several storage companies have gone public in the capital market since 2026. Meanwhile, Yangtze Memory Technologies, Starry Sky Technology, and Core Universe are also lining up for listing.

Not long ago, Jiangbolong completed its “A+H” listing layout. This company's story also began in Shenzhen. In 1996, high school graduate Cai Huabo moved to Shenzhen to work in sales at an electronics company. Three years later, he started Jiangbolong with his twin sister Cai Lijiang.

After years of development, this company's product line covers embedded storage, consumer and enterprise solid-state drives, memory modules, and mobile storage. Calculating the revenue from storage products in 2025, Jiangbolong has become China’s largest independent memory manufacturer and ranks second globally in the independent memory sector.

Another company that completed the “A+H” listing layout is Zhaoyi Innovation. In 2005, Tsinghua alumnus Zhu Yiming founded Zhaoyi Innovation, primarily engaged in R&D and manufacturing of NOR Flash storage chips. After listing on the A-share market in 2016, the company successfully went public in Hong Kong in 2026.

Ten years ago, Zhaoyi Innovation expanded into the DRAM field and initiated a bid to acquire Silan Microelectronics. Although the acquisition was unsuccessful, Zhu Yiming later chose to collaborate with Hefei, which eventually led to the birth of Changxin Technology. Later, Changxin Technology grew into a DRAM chip R&D design and manufacturing integrated enterprise, becoming the largest IPO on the A-share market since 2026.

Shortly after Changxin Technology's IPO, Yangtze Memory Technologies, established in the same year, also officially applied for listing on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board.

In 2016, based on Wuhan Xinxin, along with support from Unisplendour and the National Big Fund, Yangtze Memory Technologies was born. To date, they not only own the only domestic 3D NAND flash memory factory but have also achieved full autonomy from chip design, manufacturing, packaging testing to system solutions.

In just three months, this company completed the process from counseling record registration to submitting the application document, setting a record for the fastest counseling acceptance since the opening of the Sci-Tech Innovation Board. The planned fundraising amount of 33 billion yuan also positions Yangtze Memory Technologies as one of the most significant IPOs in the history of the Sci-Tech Innovation Board.

The IPO frenzy is driven by a new round of demand growth in the storage market. Training and inference of AI large models require managing massive amounts of data, while terminal products like AI smartphones and AI computers are iterating continuously, and the rising intelligence in automobiles and the construction of data centers are also increasing requirements for storage capacity, performance, and reliability.

It is essential not to overlook that the storage industry is long-term affected by technological iterations, price fluctuations, and market supply-demand adjustments. Additionally, dynamic changes in macro factors such as policies lead to differences in profitability, capital demands, and IPO progresses among various enterprises.

Although the storage industry is in a boom cycle, the IPO window may not remain open indefinitely. With IPO review rhythms tightening, the time available for these storage companies may be dwindling.

Original by Investment Media

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