Securing the title of "stock king" comes with its challenges. Shortly after ascending to become the new "stock king" of the A-share market, Yuanjie Semiconductor Technology Co.,Ltd. encountered a significant incident.
On the evening of May 14, Yuanjie Semiconductor announced that Vice President Chen Wenjun had been placed under criminal detention by public security authorities due to suspected criminal involvement, rendering him unable to perform his duties. The company emphasized that this event would not impact its normal business operations.
Although Yuanjie Semiconductor acted swiftly to distance itself, the separation was not entirely clean. In the announcement, the company stated that its board of directors had reviewed and decided to remove Chen Wenjun from his position as vice president. However, even after his dismissal, he continues to hold other roles within the company.
At the market open on May 15, Yuanjie Semiconductor's stock price experienced a sharp decline, dropping to 1,515 yuan per share at one point during trading, a decrease of over 7.35%. It closed at 1,559 yuan per share, down 4.65%.
The fallout from Yuanjie Semiconductor directly affected the entire Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) sector. On that day, the CPO sector fell by 1.40%, with the optical chip sub-sector dropping more than 4%.
Chen Wenjun is not only a senior executive at Yuanjie Semiconductor but also holds company shares valued at over 5 billion yuan. Public records show that Chen Wenjun, born in 1981, holds a master's degree in Optical Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Before joining Yuanjie Semiconductor, he served as vice president at Changxin Bochuang and held positions at overseas companies including Fiberxon, RTI HK Limited, and Mellanox Technologies. He assumed the role of vice president at Yuanjie Semiconductor in May 2021.
Financial reports indicate that in 2025, Chen Wenjun's pre-tax annual salary was 905,700 yuan, second only to Chairman Zhang Xingang's 1.25 million yuan. While this compensation is not particularly high in the A-share market, equity incentives represent the core source of his wealth.
Yuanjie Semiconductor is known for rewarding employees with stock. Since September 2020, the company has implemented employee stock ownership plans. Chen Wenjun joined just as Yuanjie Semiconductor entered a peak period for equity incentives. Starting in 2023, the company has conducted annual equity incentives, including restricted stock grants.
In the 2022 financial report, Chen Wenjun held no shares. By 2023, his holdings had increased to 126,000 shares with an exercise price of 36.04 yuan. In 2024, his holdings grew further to 220,500 shares, and by 2025, they reached 308,600 shares.
The average transaction prices for these three equity incentive rounds were 36.04 yuan, 35.84 yuan, and 65.56 yuan, all significantly below the market prices at the time. The total cost of these three incentive rounds amounted to approximately 13 million yuan.
As Yuanjie Semiconductor's stock price surged throughout 2025, it reached a historic peak of 1,766.88 yuan per share on May 12. This represents an increase of over 19 times from its low of 87.70 yuan per share in April 2025.
Senior executives and core employees have amassed considerable wealth through years of employee stock ownership and equity incentives. Based on the closing price of 1,635 yuan per share on May 14, Chen Wenjun's holdings of 308,600 shares are valued at over 5 billion yuan, which is 557 times his 2025 cash compensation, highlighting substantial equity gains.
However, not all of his shares are available for unrestricted trading. The 2025 annual report shows that 126,000 shares of Chen Wenjun's holdings are currently eligible for market trading. The remaining two batches are set to be unlocked in March 2027 and March 2028, respectively.
Yuanjie Semiconductor is one of the world's top six laser chip suppliers and the second-largest supplier of silicon photonics high-speed optical interconnect laser chips globally. It is among the few companies capable of mass-producing CW laser chips on a scale of tens of millions of units.
Notably, while Yuanjie Semiconductor's stock price has surpassed that of Kweichow Moutai to become the new "stock king," its market capitalization and performance scale remain far behind. As of the close on May 15, its total market capitalization stood at 134 billion yuan, whereas Moutai's market capitalization is approximately 1.67 trillion yuan.
In terms of performance, Yuanjie Semiconductor's revenue for 2025 was less than 10 billion yuan. Although its net profit growth reached an astonishing 3,212.62%, the net profit scale was only 191 million yuan, making it difficult for the market to sustain the expectations associated with the "stock king" title.
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