On January 8, 2026, Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. China (AMEC, 688012.SH) issued an announcement: its Chairman and General Manager, Gerald Yin, planned to reduce his shareholding by 0.046% between January 30 and April 29. The reason cited was the need to handle related tax matters in accordance with the law, following his restoration of Chinese citizenship from foreign nationality. This single announcement thrust the nearly 82-year-old Gerald Yin and AMEC into the spotlight, attracting significant market attention. Currently, Gerald Yin holds a 0.664% stake in AMEC. For Gerald Yin, from founding AMEC in 2004 to today, he has spent over 20 years building the company from scratch into a globally leading giant in micro-fabrication equipment. In the field of etching, it now stands toe-to-toe with international behemoths like Applied Materials and Lam Research. Two decades ago, it was widely believed that a Chinese startup had no place for survival in the highly technologically-barriered semiconductor high-end manufacturing equipment sector, which was absolutely dominated by American and Japanese giants. But Gerald Yin changed the entire industry's perspective. AMEC's market capitalization has now soared to 236.1 billion yuan (as of January 16, 2026). The company's latest disclosed third-quarter report shows that for the first three quarters of 2025, it achieved operating revenue of 8.063 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 46.40%; net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 1.211 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.66%. Gerald Yin, born in 1944, gained admission to Beijing No.4 High School in 1956, where he was an alumnus of Jiang Shangzhou, former Chairman of SMIC. After academic training culminating in a bachelor's degree in Chemical Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China and graduate studies in the Chemistry Department of Peking University, Yin set foot in Silicon Valley in the 1980s. That era was the golden age when Morris Chang was making his mark at Texas Instruments and Intel was establishing its semiconductor hegemony. Yin worked for nearly 20 years at semiconductor giants including Intel, Lam Research, and Applied Materials. He was directly involved in the R&D of multiple generations of etching machines and was one of the key inventors and drivers of the industrial application of several generations of plasma etch technologies and equipment; some of these machines are still operating on production lines worldwide today. Etching is one of the three core processes in chip manufacturing (alongside lithography and thin-film deposition). Just as lithography machines are seen as the key equipment for breaking through advanced process nodes in semiconductor manufacturing, wafer fabrication giants like TSMC, SMIC, and SK Hynix must rely on high-precision plasma etch technology to carve out billions of microscopic trenches with extremely high aspect ratios on silicon wafers when advancing to more advanced processes. Leveraging his diligence and intelligence, at Lam Research, Yin led the development of the "Rainbow" capacitive dielectric plasma etcher, helping Lam establish market and technological leadership. At Applied Materials, as Corporate Vice President, General Manager of the Etch Product Business Group, and Chief Technology Officer of the Asia Headquarters, he participated in the development of almost all the most important generations of etching equipment at the time. Over his 20 years in Silicon Valley, Gerald Yin personally held over 80 US patents and was recognized as one of the most influential experts in the field of plasma etch technology. If lithography is about drawing extremely precise circuit blueprints on a silicon wafer, then thin-film deposition is responsible for laying a film layer on the wafer's surface, while etching carves the microscopic trenches into the wafer, removing the film from areas where it shouldn't be according to the blueprint. As chip processes advanced from 28 nanometers to more advanced nodes, the difficulty of this microscopic sculpting increased exponentially. Summarizing the core role of etching in chip manufacturing, Gerald Yin explained that achieving the capability for extremely high-precision "microscopic sculpting" is crucial for the semiconductor industry to overcome physical limits. From the early 65nm and 40nm nodes to the current challenges of 5nm and 3nm, the evolution of each process generation is inseparable from the precise operation of etching machines. He likened micro-fabrication to "cutting paper window decorations": thin-film deposition provides the "red paper," the lithography machine draws the "patterns" on the paper, and the plasma etcher acts as the extremely precise "scissors," responsible for removing the unwanted parts, ultimately delineating the layered microscopic structures. Although lithography machines have always been regarded as the "leader" among the three processes, as processes moved below 14nm, even the wavelength of Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines struggled to directly draw finer lines. At this point, the industry had to employ multiple patterning techniques, utilizing the coordination of etchers and thin films to refine the lines from thick to thin. To this day, every breakthrough in etching technology directly clears obstacles for the mass production of advanced processes, while improvements in chip performance, in turn, impose stricter demands on etching processes, creating a cycle that propels Moore's Law forward. In 2004, heeding the advice of Jiang Shangzhou, then Deputy Director of the Shanghai Municipal Economic Commission, Gerald Yin resigned from his position as Vice President at Applied Materials, then the world's largest semiconductor equipment supplier, returned to Shanghai, and founded AMEC to research semiconductor etching process equipment, dedicating the remainder of his life to China's semiconductor industry. At its inception, AMEC faced an extremely difficult situation, confronting international giants that had built up patent barriers and market dominance over decades. Faced with this near-suffocating pressure, Yin did not choose to methodically address weaknesses. Instead, he proposed that innovation and differentiation in the technological roadmap were essential to achieve leapfrogging. For instance, tackling the plasma source problem that had plagued the industry for 20 years, AMEC pioneered the concept of "Decoupled Reactive Ion Etching," which applied both high and low-frequency AC radio frequencies to the lower electrode. This technology led international giants by several years and even prompted subsequent industry follow-up. In terms of equipment architecture, AMEC took an unconventional path, developing the ingenious design of "dual reaction chambers for simultaneous processing." This solution, enabling two wafers to be processed simultaneously within one reactor, doubled production efficiency within the same footprint. In June 2007, AMEC successfully developed its first dual-reaction-chamber CCP etching equipment and delivered it to a domestic customer. This etcher could be applied to 12-inch wafer production lines, covering chip production from 65nm to 45nm, achieving a breakthrough from 0 to 1 for domestic high-end etching equipment. It was precisely by virtue of this distinctive technological innovation path that AMEC successfully secured a place for Chinese semiconductor equipment in the market. AMEC's rapid rise in the etching field quickly alerted international giants. For the incumbents, litigation is the cheapest and most effective means to curb potential competitors. In October 2007, Applied Materials initiated the offensive, suing AMEC in US federal court, alleging patent infringement and theft of trade secrets. Subsequently, Lam Group also filed a lawsuit against AMEC. At that time, AMEC was still small in scale and financially strained. Facing opponents with market capitalizations hundreds of times larger, the general consensus was that this startup was doomed to fail. However, Yin demonstrated typical engineer-like rationality. He implemented a stringent "clean room" R&D process internally, requiring R&D personnel to conduct thorough patent circumvention from the design phase, establishing the independence of the technological path. Furthermore, he spared no expense, investing $25 million to hire a top-tier legal team to conduct detailed checks on the company's massive volume of documents, proving that the core technology was entirely independently developed and definitely not sourced from his former employer, Applied Materials. During the years-long legal tug-of-war, AMEC not only presented solid original R&D records in court but also directly demonstrated to the judge a completely independently designed reaction chamber structure that differed from its opponents'. While building defensive fortifications, Yin also launched a counterattack, suing Applied Materials in Shanghai for unfair competition. After a two-and-a-half-year stalemate, the parties reached a settlement, signifying that AMEC had firmly established itself technologically. Subsequently, Lam also sued AMEC for patent infringement, but the cases concluded with victories for AMEC. In 2015, the US Department of Commerce lifted export controls on high-end Chinese etching equipment, reasoning that the successful R&D and mass production of AMEC's plasma etchers made the technological blockade "unnecessary." Currently, AMEC has developed 18 types of plasma etching equipment, covering applications from 65nm to 5nm and more advanced process technologies. In thin-film deposition equipment (MOCVD), starting from scratch in 2010, AMEC single-handedly broke the long-standing monopoly held by two suppliers, US-based Veeco and Germany's Aixtron, in the domestic market. On July 22, 2019, AMEC listed on the STAR Market, becoming one of the first 25 companies to debut on the board and the only semiconductor equipment manufacturer among them, regarded by the market as a benchmark for "hard technology." Simultaneously, AMEC's performance on its listing day was highly topical. Its price-to-earnings ratio at issuance reached 170 times, far exceeding the common 23-times red line in the A-share market at the time, seen as a major indicator of China's capital market shifting its focus from "profit scale" to "R&D accumulation." Post-listing, AMEC's challenges evolved from commercial litigation to geopolitical games, facing repeated pressure from the US government. Geopolitical factors forced AMEC to accelerate its process of addressing technological gaps through R&D. Financial reports show that in the first three quarters of 2025, AMEC's R&D expenditure reached 2.523 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of approximately 63.44%, with the R&D ratio soaring to 31.29%. A widely circulated anecdote from when the 60-year-old Yin first returned to China involves him taking a taxi in Shanghai. The driver, observing his demeanor, casually complimented him, saying he "looked about 38 years old." Upon hearing that Yin was already 60, the driver was astounded. To this day, Yin maintains an extremely high work intensity, fighting on the front lines of both research and management. The company he built from the ground up has completed the leap from zero to competing on the same field as American and Japanese giants. At the center of the geopolitical storm, Yin, with the legal rationality of a seasoned Silicon Valley veteran, responds calmly, insisting on using legal logic to counter political pressure and adopting an offensive stance for defense. Over these two decades of journey, he has proven that in the hardcore race of hard technology, Chinese enterprises can not only break through via technology but also win respect through rules and vision. Now, at 82, through a share reduction announcement, Gerald Yin has revealed a major personal milestone: the restoration of his Chinese citizenship from American nationality. This "Silicon Valley veteran" has provided an ultimate account of his original entrepreneurial intentions. Reflecting on the past, Yin once remarked that although his twenty years in Silicon Valley involved deep participation in the rise of top US and Japanese semiconductor equipment giants, as a veteran who received a solid education in China and possessed over a decade of local practical experience before going to the US at age 36, he always harbored a sense of debt towards his homeland. "I should do things for my own country," he felt. This sentiment of serving the nation is not just a personal aspiration but also a continuation of a family legacy. "The three generations before me in my family all returned to serve the motherland after their studies, participating in the democratic revolution and socialist construction. So I must emulate the spirit of my predecessors," he stated.
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