What makes Yuanjie – a Chinese optical chip star and Hong Kong IPO candidate – stand out?
Yuanjie’s rise underscores how China’s optical chip firms are riding the AI infrastructure boom, with data centre demand driving growth
Yuanjie Semiconductor Technology, a Chinese maker of laser chips for optical communications, has emerged as one of the mainland exchanges’ biggest beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence infrastructure boom – with its shares rising nearly ninefold over the past year as it pursues a Hong Kong listing.
The Shaanxi-based integrated device manufacturer, whose shares closed at 1,100 yuan on Friday, now ranks second by share price among mainland-listed companies, trailing only Kweichow Moutai at 1,416 yuan. Yuanjie’s market capitalisation stands at about 94.6 billion yuan (US$13.7 billion).
It is only the second company on Shanghai’s tech-focused STAR market to breach the 1,000 yuan threshold, after AI chipmaker Cambricon.
Founded in 2013 by Zhang Xingang, a Tsinghua University graduate who later earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Southern California, Yuanjie listed on the STAR Market in 2022. Zhang, a veteran of the optical communications industry, previously worked at Luminent and Source Photonics before establishing the company.