The "15th Five-Year Plan" proposal calls for accelerating technological self-reliance, leading the development of new quality productive forces, and promoting deep integration of technological innovation with industrial innovation. It also emphasizes forward-looking deployment of future industries and establishing mechanisms for investment growth and risk-sharing in these sectors.
When policy reaches the factory floor, it often begins with a single piece of equipment entering the facility.
At Kingsemi Semiconductor, the validation process does not conclude after an ion implanter is installed, debugged, and trial-run. Wafers must still proceed through numerous subsequent manufacturing steps before electrical performance tests, held months later, can determine whether the equipment is stable and whether it impacts chip yields.
Equipment manufacturers care about sustained delivery capabilities, wafer fabs focus on stable mass production, and insurance companies face more specific questions: which losses can be written into contracts, and which must remain subject to technical validation itself.
Based on China Life Property & Casualty Insurance Company's data from the first half of 2026, the company has developed over twenty new tech insurance products covering life sciences, embodied intelligence, and commercialization of scientific achievements, providing 13.7 trillion yuan in risk protection for 126,800 tech enterprises.
Field research by Wall Street News conducted recently at Shanghai Sudu Technology, Kingsemi Semiconductor, and Chaoqun Detection reveals that behind this substantial protection lies no single financial solution applicable to all tech enterprises.
For example, Kingsemi Semiconductor has seen its first-set-of-equipment insured devices go into batch production; Sudu Technology has entered the commercialization validation phase with primary needs centered on funding, R&D investment, and real-world application scenarios; and Chaoqun Detection, already possessing strategic investment and basic operational coverage, faces risks related to high-end medical component integration, product liability in medical contexts, and overseas markets.
The three enterprises at different stages of development also delineate the boundaries of tech insurance.
Who Bears Responsibility for First-Time Use
Ion implanters, alongside lithography machines and etchers, rank among the critical equipment for chip manufacturing. They implant different elements into specific regions of silicon wafers, altering the material's conductive properties to form the most fundamental functional structures of chips.
"Without ion implantation, chip manufacturing cannot be completed," explained Yin Chao, Board Secretary of Kingsemi Semiconductor, underscoring the equipment's importance.
For such critical equipment, the validation cycle tends to be lengthy.
According to Yin Chao, the effects of ion implantation are difficult to assess in real-time online, and chip manufacturing must complete the full process before conclusions can be drawn through electrical performance testing.
Zhang Changyong, Deputy General Manager of Kingsemi Semiconductor, breaks this process into three checkpoints: equipment installation and operation, performance verification through complete process flows, and accumulation of sufficient data during mass production.
It is reported that the company has delivered over 55 units of 12-inch equipment cumulatively, with more than 20 million wafers processed through its equipment.
Each additional batch of wafer data provides the enterprise with more evidence for entering additional production lines. Given the high equipment value and long installation and testing cycles, rigorous validation is required to verify equipment performance, reliability, and stability. First-set-of-equipment insurance can provide protection support for potential risks such as component quality issues.
Zhang Changyong noted that Kingsemi had already established a multi-layered process including factory acceptance tests, customer audits, test wafer validation, and mass production monitoring before insurance intervention. Through this rigorous "multi-layer screening process" standard in the semiconductor industry, risks are compressed to extremely low levels, with insurance covering residual occasional losses that still exist.
The value of first-set-of-equipment insurance lies precisely in using a single policy to enhance customer trust in domestically-produced semiconductor equipment. The effectiveness of this credit enhancement has already been validated in the market: recently, Kingsemi successfully delivered its first ion implanter iKing 360, designed for thin-film lithium niobate material preparation, to a domestic optoelectronic chip customer's production line. Thin-film lithium niobate is considered by the industry as a core material supporting 800G and above, particularly 1.6T ultra-high-speed optical modules, and its wafer preparation relies on high-precision ion implantation processes, with related equipment historically dependent on imports. The delivery of iKing 360 marks domestic equipment entering this core segment. With each step forward for domestic equipment, someone must underwrite the trust cost of "daring to use" — and this is precisely the irreplaceable position of insurance.
Chen Yuxia, General Manager of the Technology Finance Department at China Life P&C Insurance's Shanghai Branch, introduced that the company has configured for Kingsemi first-set-of-equipment major technical equipment liability insurance, quality assurance insurance, and first-set-of-equipment installation and testing period liability insurance and product quality assurance insurance. These cover equipment repair, replacement losses, third-party property losses potentially caused by equipment defects, as well as risks during installation, debugging, and trial operation phases.
These are not substitutes for supplier warranties, customer acceptance processes, or fiscal subsidies. Supplier warranties address contractual quality obligations, customer acceptance determines whether equipment meets production requirements, insurance assumes certain losses within agreed liability scopes, and fiscal subsidies reduce the premium burden for enterprises using first-set-of-equipment insurance.
First-set-of-equipment insurance is not simply a certificate endorsing technology; rather, after technical risk control, it delineates a calculable boundary of responsibility between equipment manufacturers and customers.
This risk allocation is not easy.
Li Xin, Senior Manager of the Liability, Intention, and Health Insurance Department at China Life P&C Insurance, told Wall Street News that the special nature of first-set coverage lies in the "first": domestically-produced high-end equipment being commercialized for the first time, lacking mature application history, with continuously iterating technical parameters and a general industry absence of reference failure and claims data. Policy subsidies, co-insurance mechanisms, and industry-wide data sharing are important supports for mitigating early-stage risks of first-set equipment.
Li Xin summarized insurance's role as converting "uncertain large losses" into "certain premium costs." While insurance itself cannot directly determine procurement and acceptance outcomes, it effectively alleviates downstream users' concerns, enhances market acceptance of domestic equipment, creates favorable conditions for equipment deployment and application, and these benefits are continuously demonstrating results in industrial practice.
Challenges Beyond the Policy
The risks facing Sudu Technology do not disappear once equipment enters customer production lines.
For a robotic arm to pick up a part from a tabletop, it must recognize the object's shape and position, and determine grasping angle and force. When parts change, lighting varies, or workspace space tightens, previously effective actions may fail. What humans naturally accomplish in grasping and placing is, for robots, the result of coordinated vision, algorithms, control, and hardware working together.
Xu Zexiang, Vice President of R&D at Shanghai Sudu Technology, summarizes the industry bottleneck as "accomplishing the task": while large models can already understand language and plan steps, robots still require many foundational capabilities to be developed before they can reliably complete grasping, placing, force control, and compliant operations in real-world environments.
Sudu sets achieving over 99% success rates for specific skills in target scenarios as its commercialization threshold.
Han Zheng, CEO of Sudu Technology, told Wall Street News: "Generality is the destination; reliability is the starting point."
Han Zheng stated that the company hopes to first train reusable foundational skills before combining them into more tasks, rather than rapidly customizing around single workstations.
This type of uncertainty differs from the equipment liability risks faced by Kingsemi.
Whether robots can achieve generalization, whether technical routes can succeed, whether hardware can achieve mass production, and whether customers will generate scale orders cannot be directly covered by a liability insurance or quality assurance policy. Technology, R&D, and commercialization risks remain primarily borne by enterprises, shareholders, and the market collectively.
Sudu has already conducted validation in industrial scenarios such as battery module assembly and has entered the commercialization validation phase; however, moving from a single pilot to batch delivery requires passing through quality control, on-site service, cost management, and customer acceptance. A successful demonstration on a trade show floor and continuous stable operation over months in a factory represent two different levels of capability.
Wall Street News learned that China Life Equity has invested in Sudu in 2026.
Ji Xiang, Deputy Director of the Innovation Investment Center at China Life Equity, stated that the team values the long-term potential of embodied intelligence extending from the digital world to the physical world, rather than short-term hype. Funding support, governance experience, and scenario resources in healthcare, elderly care, hospitals, and manufacturing constitute support at this stage.
Scenarios allow technology teams to access real workstations, processes, and users, helping identify product issues, but they do not equate to orders. At least at the current stage, Sudu's primary needs remain funding, R&D, and scenarios, rather than insuring its technical route itself.
This is also why tech insurance struggles to cover all industrialization risks.
The R&D and commercialization validation phase requires capital that can tolerate trial-and-error cycles, and environments conducive to product refinement; only after equipment enters scale delivery and liability boundaries gradually become clear does insurance become more likely to find insurable risk units.
Coordination Still Under Trial
Chaoqun Detection occupies a more complex middle ground.
CT tubes are core components that generate X-rays in CT equipment, while DSA tubes are used in interventional diagnostic and therapeutic scenarios. Though compact in size, they must operate reliably under high temperature, high voltage, and high vacuum conditions. Once products enter medical supply chains, quality, regulatory compliance, complete machine integration, after-sales response, and liability allocation all become part of commercialization.
Tang Zhihong, founder of Shanghai Chaoqun Detection Technology, stated that high-end manufacturing "requires long-term technological accumulation."
Chaoqun started from industrial X-ray operations and, through years of technological accumulation and industrial consolidation, has gradually entered high-end medical core component fields including CT and DSA tubes. Material, vacuum, thermal management, and precision manufacturing process details determine product performance and lifespan.
Wang Kai, Director of the Medical Investment Center at China Life Equity, observed that Chaoqun has begun advancing front-end configuration collaborations with complete machine manufacturers.
Front-end configuration means tubes enter the supply system before complete machines ship, requiring enterprises to withstand stricter stability, delivery, and after-sales requirements. Whether front-end configuration moves from validation to stable supply still depends on subsequent milestones including product registration, actual installation, and complete machine manufacturer validation.
It is reported that China Life Equity led Chaoqun Detection's Series D financing in 2025, and China Life P&C Insurance has also covered its basic operational risks, with total coverage exceeding 650 million yuan. As high-end tubes enter broader markets, risk units including product liability in medical scenarios, intellectual property, and overseas operations will gradually become clearer alongside product integration.
Tang Zhihong mentioned that as DSA tubes enter high-reliability scenarios such as interventional diagnostics and treatment, the importance of product liability protection increases; in overseas operations, liability insurance is also often a basic configuration for establishing commercial credibility.
China Life P&C Insurance is currently exploring directions with Chaoqun including first-set equipment, product liability, intellectual property, and pilot-scale insurance. Basic operational coverage has been implemented, but more industry-specific risk protection still needs to be clarified alongside product integration.
This also demonstrates that investment-insurance coordination cannot be simplistically understood as "insuring after investing." The investment side evaluates technology and growth, while the underwriting side requires independent risk assessment, pricing, and control; whether the two can form a relay depends on data accumulation, risk identification, and product maturity.
Kingsemi, Sudu, and Chaoqun respectively illustrate where tech insurance, insurance capital investment, and scenario resources may position themselves:
Kingsemi's insurance assumes occasional risks during equipment validation;
Sudu still primarily relies on capital, R&D, and scenario refinement;
Chaoqun sits at a stage where investment support, basic coverage, and new risk units are gradually forming.
Whether technology ultimately reaches the market still depends on performance, yields, cost, and service. Insurance cannot replace technical validation, but after technical validation, it can provide a risk price for identified and calculable losses.
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