Computing power serves as the physical foundation for AI. As China's GPU capital, Shanghai has already seen multiple enterprises gather in the capital market.
Amid the explosive growth in global demand for large models and computing power, XIZHI TECH-P (01879.HK), the world's first technology company centered on optoelectronic hybrid computing power, officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange today (28th), introducing the first comparable player in the global capital market for the "optical computing and optical interconnection" sector.
On its first trading day, XIZHI TECH-P opened at HK$880, significantly above its IPO price of HK$183.2, continuing the market fervor from its nearly 5,800-times oversubscribed public offering phase.
"Within the next five years, silicon photonics chips are expected to account for 30% to 50% of both the chip count and market size in data centers," Dr. Shen Yichen, Founder and CEO of XIZHI TECH-P, stated.
As global large model technology advances towards multimodality and deeper integration into vertical industries, computing power has become a core underlying asset determining the influence in the digital economy for regions and even nations.
It's not just XIZHI TECH-P; in recent years, Shanghai's computing power industry has entered a "capital harvest period." Especially since 2026, not only have leading general-purpose AI computing companies like Biren Technology (06082.HK) and Suiyuan Technology (which has completed its IPO辅导 and is冲刺 the STAR Market) made successive breakthroughs in the capital market, but unicorns focusing on heterogeneous computing and disruptive frontier architectures, such as MetaX (688802.SH) and XIZHI TECH-P (01879.HK), have also successively passed their commercial inflection points. Shanghai's computing power ecosystem is evolving from "single-point technological breakthroughs" to "full-stack ecological synergy." In this "computing power arms race" dominated by Scaling Law, Shanghai is accelerating the realization of its layout as a "global computing power capital" through forward-looking industrial cluster planning and comprehensive factor empowerment.
Image source: XIZHI TECH-P
Aspiring to be the "Tesla" of the Computing Power Market
Against the backdrop of Moore's Law approaching its physical limits and the "memory wall" and "power wall" becoming bottlenecks for computing power, Shanghai is making strategic moves in next-generation computing architectures.
Leveraging advantages such as high throughput, low latency, and low energy consumption, silicon photonics holds broad application prospects in areas like optical interconnection, optical computing, and optical sensing.
As a disruptive technological pathway in the "post-Moore era," silicon photonics is a strategic field receiving global attention and prioritized development. Shanghai places high importance on frontier technological innovation and the cultivation of future industries in silicon photonics, vigorously promoting project layouts, platform construction, and ecosystem development. In June last year, the Shanghai Silicon Photonics Future Industrial Cluster Zone was officially launched for construction in the Pudong New Area.
XIZHI TECH-P's listing today also sends a clear signal to the market: Shanghai's computing power ambitions are not merely about "catching up" with the present but also about "defining" the future.
Image: Shen Yichen
"China is highly likely to become the first country globally to deploy optical computing on a large scale. Against the backdrop of restricted access to external high-performance electrical chips, the domestic computing power market's embrace of innovative technologies like optical interconnection and optical computing far outpaces that overseas. Leveraging the highly concentrated ecosystem of GPU companies, wafer production capacity, and large model application manufacturers in Shanghai and surrounding regions, XIZHI TECH-P is deeply collaborating with major domestic universities to jointly build the future optical computing ecosystem," Shen Yichen told reporters.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, XIZHI TECH-P is the world's first company to achieve large-scale deployment of optoelectronic hybrid computing power. The company's optical computing chips have led global cumulative shipments for two consecutive years, establishing underlying barriers in core technologies such as photonic matrix computing and on-chip/inter-chip optical networks, making it a rare domestic player driven by both optical interconnection and optical computing. Furthermore, the prospectus indicates that among independent Scale-up optical interconnection solution providers in China, XIZHI TECH-P ranked first in the domestic market by revenue in 2025, capturing approximately 88.3% market share.
In Shen Yichen's view, in the coming years, optical chips and traditional chips will undergo very deep integration; in the future, there might be an optical chip working alongside every major GPU chip. "This is why we believe that within five years, optical chips will account for 30% to 50% of the chip count and market size in data centers. In the next 3 to 5 years, a market worth trillions of US dollars or even larger will emerge."
This judgment stems from over a decade of research by Shen Yichen and his team. The company's Founder and CEO Dr. Shen Yichen, CTO Dr. Meng Huayu, and CFO Zhang Hong are all graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and were among the world's earliest scientists researching silicon photonics chip technology.
In 2017, Shen Yichen's team published the world's first paper on photonic computing in *Nature Photonics* and established the company that same year. Around 2020, the company shifted its focus entirely to China, setting up its headquarters in Shanghai. Currently, the headquarters employs over 260 staff, with R&D personnel comprising more than half.
Mi Lei, Founding Partner of CAS Star, who noticed XIZHI TECH-P from the aforementioned paper and made an early-stage investment, commented that the XIZHI TECH-P team, focusing on optical interconnection and optical computing, develops its own optoelectronic hybrid chips to provide scalable and cost-effective solutions for the information industry, demonstrating strong pioneering and leadership qualities. He also noted the company has assembled a world-class entrepreneurial team with robust capabilities, achieving breakthrough progress in engineering implementation.
Regarding the company's main business segments, Shen Yichen highlighted three areas: optical interconnection, optical switching, and optical computing. Optical interconnection is currently driving hyper-growth, accounting for approximately 70% of the company's total revenue in 2025. Optical computing, possessing the highest technological barriers and the greatest long-term potential, is the technology the company pioneered globally. They plan to launch a large model inference optical computing chip with world-leading computing power within this year or the next.
"Our biggest competitor currently is not players in the same niche, but 'traditional electrical computing and copper interconnects,' which hold 99% of the market share. Our current goal is to gradually replace the market by solving the pain points of high-density, long-distance connections where traditional electrical signals struggle ('cannot connect well, cannot connect reliably'). In the future, we hope to become the 'Tesla' of the computing power market, leading industry standards through revolutionary technology," Shen said.
Addressing market concerns about profitability and R&D investment, Shen Yichen explained that the company achieved revenue of approximately 100 million RMB in 2025, maintaining a compound annual growth rate exceeding 100% in recent years.
"Regarding profitability, the prospectus discloses that out of last year's 1.3 billion RMB loss, about 1 billion RMB was non-cash expenses like options granted to employees. The company's actual annual net cash expenditure remains in the healthy range of 200-300 million RMB. After the listing completion, the company will have more ample cash reserves. We will not cut R&D for short-term profitability, but as product revenue grows non-linearly, cash flow will continue to improve."
The lack of direct comparable companies for XIZHI TECH-P in the global capital market also contributed to its cornerstone investor lineup setting a record in recent years for Hong Kong stocks as the "most international and luxurious." For an emerging tech company yet to achieve full profitability, it attracted participation from cornerstone investors including Fidelity International (the largest US long-term fund), Schroders and Baillie Gifford (major European long-term funds), UBS, GIC (Asia's largest sovereign wealth fund), Temasek, and Mirae Asset (Korean semi-sovereign fund). On the industrial side, besides cornerstone investor Alibaba, the company also received backing pre-IPO from capital associated with China Mobile, Tencent, and Baidu.
The Full-Stack Ecosystem of the Computing Power Capital
Computing power is the physical basis of AI. As China's GPU capital, Shanghai has seen several companies gather in the capital market, including the previously successfully listed MetaX (688802.SH) and Biren Technology (06082.HK), Tianshu Zhixin (09903.HK) which listed on the HKEX on January 8th, and Suiyuan Technology, which has completed its IPO辅导 and is冲刺 the STAR Market.
The underlying logic enabling this cohort of computing power unicorns to collectively navigate lengthy R&D cycles in Shanghai and advance towards the capital market lies in the comprehensive, full-stack industrial ecosystem Shanghai has built, integrating "hardware foundation, software ecosystem, capital empowerment, and coordinated scheduling."
The latest data obtained reveals that Shanghai's integrated circuit industry scale reached approximately 580 billion RMB in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 15.5%, more than doubling over five years and exceeding the "14th Five-Year Plan" development targets. A comprehensive IC industry chain system has been established where all segments advance together and support each other, nurturing a group of leading enterprises in segments including chip design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, equipment/materials, and EDA/IP, including 35 companies listed on the STAR Market, ranking first domestically. The chip design and manufacturing sectors continue to hold leading domestic positions, with advanced packaging accelerating its layout, equipment/materials leading the high-end, and EDA/IP developing集聚.
Behind the gathering of computing power enterprises is an integrated circuit industry that has been developing for decades. In the latest World IC Association's "Global Top 100 Cities for Comprehensive Competitiveness in the IC Industry" ranking, Shanghai placed fourth globally and first domestically.
This environment, which aggregates over 1,200 IC companies, gathers about 40% of the nation's industrial talent and nearly 50% of its industrial innovation resources, also facilitates many collaborations directly through offline activities.
"Many of our collaborations literally started from playing soccer in Zhangjiang," Shen Yichen mentioned. From design and manufacturing to packaging, equipment, and materials, Shanghai has a full-chain layout in integrated circuits, and XIZHI TECH-P is a beneficiary. During last July's WAIC, their optical interconnection electrical switching hyper-node solution developed in cooperation with MetaX was publicly unveiled for the first time. They also jointly launched the country's first xPU-CPO optoelectronic co-packaged prototype system with Suiyuan Tech, and together with Biren Technology and ZTE, their LightSphere X product won the top award at the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
It was also during last year's WAIC that Shen Yichen first mentioned his desire for an IPO to Zhang Kun, Director of XIZHI TECH-P and Managing Partner of Shanghai Guotou Futeng Capital ("Guotou Futeng"). "We initially thought another funding round might be needed, but Dr. Shen firmly believed 2026 would be a big year for silicon photonics," Zhang Kun recalled during an interview, stating they immediately expressed agreement and support, based on their deep analysis of the industry's deterministic trend.
Zhang Kun believes that in hard tech investing, pure technological idealism often struggles to cross the commercialization chasm. Besides the deep研判 on the deterministic trend of underlying computing power, another reason was the founder's qualities. "Investing in them was not only because 'silicon photonics' is a highly reliable technological path with long-term potential, but also because founder Shen Yichen is pragmatic, professional, and possesses the dual qualities of a scientist and an entrepreneur." Backing Dr. Shen and his team also aligned with Shanghai Guotou's investment criteria for产业链布局 and "first/only" projects.
He explained that in the IC field, the industrial ecosystem for optical computing is still in its developmental stage. Whether it's design, manufacturing, or downstream server manufacturers, mass production experience is lacking. However, Shanghai Guotou has already fostered产业链协同 with XIZHI TECH-P at the chip, packaging, and system levels by investing in upstream and downstream companies like Jiyi (chip interconnect IP), Xinyaohui (chip interface IP), MetaX (GPU), Shenghe Jingwei (advanced packaging), and Jiliu Tech (cluster networking).
"In our selection process, we also have a system for 'dual verification' within the industry and academia: on one hand, Futeng itself is an LP in several semiconductor industry-focused funds like XMC, Yuanhe Puhua, Changxin Industrial Investment, Simgui, and AMEC, gaining frontline information through close cooperation with industry players; on the other hand, we have established deep communication mechanisms with universities like Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and even institutions in Hong Kong."
Zhang Kun disclosed that Shanghai Guotou has currently invested in large model-related companies like MiniMax (00100.HK), StepFun, and Wu Wen Xin Qiong, and is actively promoting technical对接 and cooperation between them and XIZHI TECH-P to jointly optimize the performance of optical chips for large models.
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