--- title: "\"The first AI optical chip stock\" is coming, and some investors have already made a 40-fold profit" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/282811364.md" description: "On April 13th, KNOWLEDGE ATLAS's stock price broke HKD 1,000, becoming an AI technology giant. The optical chip and optical module sectors experienced a full-scale explosion, with YUANJIE SEMICONDUCTOR (688498) achieving a year-to-date increase of 97%. Shanghai Xizhi Technology Co., Ltd. successfully passed the Hong Kong Stock Exchange IPO hearing and is expected to list on the Hong Kong stock market. Founder Shen Yichen holds a PhD in Physics from MIT and focuses on optoelectronic hybrid computing power, dedicated to providing services for AI large models and data centers. Xizhi Technology's valuation is HKD 7.8 billion and is poised for takeoff" datetime: "2026-04-15T08:33:09.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/282811364.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/282811364.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/282811364.md) --- # "The first AI optical chip stock" is coming, and some investors have already made a 40-fold profit On April 13th, the first stock of large models, ZhiPu AI (02513.HK), broke through HKD 1,000 during trading, becoming another AI technology giant with a stock price exceeding one thousand; at the same time, as a "shovel seller" of AI computing power, the optical chip and optical module sectors also experienced a surge. Among them, YUANJIE SEMICONDUCTOR (688498) saw a year-to-date increase of 97%, repeatedly hitting new highs during trading, with the stock price reaching a maximum of 1,322 yuan, becoming one of the companies with the most vigorous stock price growth after Cambricon and "Yi Zhongtian." Against this backdrop, a company emerging from Shanghai—Shanghai XiZhi Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as XiZhi Technology)—recently successfully passed the IPO hearing at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is about to enter the Hong Kong stock market. The prospectus shows that XiZhi Technology was founded in 2017 by MIT Physics PhD Shen Yichen. The company focuses on providing next-generation computing power services for AI large models and data centers, using optoelectronic hybrid computing power as a breakthrough to achieve "speeding up and reducing consumption." Before the IPO, XiZhi Technology's last round of post-investment valuation was 7.8 billion yuan. Looking at the entire chip sector, the listed companies MuXi Co., Ltd. (688802.SH) and BiRan Technology (6082.HK) have market capitalizations of 240 billion yuan and 82.6 billion HKD, respectively. With such a huge valuation gap, a super IPO is on the verge of taking off. **MIT Physics PhD Entrepreneurship,** **Aiming for "Global AI Silicon Photonic Chip First Stock"** Flipping through the prospectus of XiZhi Technology, the most striking aspect is the founder—Shen Yichen. This PhD graduate from MIT Physics is a true "light chaser." In 2017, he ignited the entrepreneurial spark in Shanghai with technological breakthroughs from his laboratory. As the iteration of AI large models accelerates and the demand for computing power in data centers skyrockets exponentially, traditional electronic computing power has approached physical limits. The performance improvements brought by transistor miniaturization are slowing down, and the dilemma of "insufficient computing power and astonishing energy consumption" has become a key bottleneck restricting the development of the AI industry. During his PhD studies at MIT, Shen Yichen delved deeply into photonic technology research and keenly perceived the enormous potential of photons as a carrier of computing power. Against this backdrop, Shen Yichen decided to dive into the industry and start a business right after graduating from a prestigious university. Relying on three core technologies: on-chip optical networks (oNOC), inter-chip optical networks (oNET), and photonic matrix computing (oMAC), XiZhi Technology quickly established product barriers. Its flagship product, the PACE series optoelectronic hybrid computing acceleration card, has become an industry benchmark. In particular, the PACE2 (XiZhi TianShu), the world's first three-dimensional through-silicon-via (TSV) packaged product, integrates over 40,000 photonic devices on a single chip, achieving a significant advantage in latency for specific algorithms compared to high-end GPUs, truly realizing "fast and energy-efficient" computing power. Moreover, its latest domestic first optical switching optical interconnect supernode product, Guangyue 128 supernode, significantly enhances the performance of training the DeepSeek V3 671B model compared to non-supernode clusters at the same scale, with model switching latency as low as microsecond level and transmission latency reduced by over 90% compared to traditional electrical switching The market feedback is also very honest. From 2023 to 2025, Xizhi Technology's revenue shows a growth trend, soaring from 38.235 million yuan in 2023 to 106 million yuan in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 66.9%. Among them, the optical interconnection business, as the core revenue pillar, will account for nearly 80% of revenue in 2025; while the optical computing business also demonstrates astonishing explosive power: achieving sales revenue of 20.2 million yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 579%, with its proportion of total revenue rapidly rising from less than 5% in 2024 to 20.8%, becoming the second growth curve. According to disclosures, Xizhi Technology will launch its new stock issuance as early as the end of April after the hearing, aiming to become "the world's first AI silicon photonic chip stock." **Valuation of 7.8 billion, Zhongke Chuangxing, China Mobile, and Shanghai Guotou Fengteng Capital are shareholders** From the perspective of the shareholder lineup, Xizhi Technology's list of investors is quite "luxurious." In addition to Dr. Shen Yichen as the single largest shareholder, Xizhi Technology has also gathered a number of star institutions including Baidu, Jingwei Venture Capital, Zhongke Chuangxing, Xiangfeng Investment, Heli Capital, Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Fund, Sequoia China, Tencent, CICC Capital, China Mobile, China Guoxin, Shanghai Guotou Fengteng Capital, and Pudong Venture Capital, forming a pattern of founder-led collaboration with industrial capital, top venture capital, and the national team. Specifically, Baidu made its layout earliest, participating in the company's seed round financing in 2018, providing 10.7 million USD in seed funding together with ZhenFund, becoming one of the first institutions to recognize its technological potential. Jingwei Venture Capital and CICC Capital followed closely, jointly leading the 26 million USD financing in the A round in 2020, promoting the company's technological productization process. Similarly, Zhongke Chuangxing and Xiangfeng Investment also entered in the A round financing. According to investment data, Zhongke Chuangxing was the first institution to confirm its investment in this round of financing. After investing, Zhongke Chuangxing continued to increase its stake, accompanying the company's growth. During the development process, Sequoia China gradually entered the scene, ultimately holding 3.02% of shares, representing the backing of top venture capital; Tencent laid out in later financing, continuing to invest in the C round financing in 2025, ultimately holding 4.19% of shares. In addition, the national team and industrial capital focused their investments in the series of C round financing from 2024 to 2025. In this series of financing, Shanghai Guotou Fengteng Capital, as a core investor, heavily participated in the C round financing exceeding 1.5 billion yuan in 2025, with China Mobile and China Guoxin also participating simultaneously, further solidifying the company's capital strength while promoting its commercial scaling development. It is worth mentioning that Heli Capital, which made a fortune from Muxi Co., Ltd., is also listed among the investors in Xizhi Technology's A+ round. The prospectus shows that Heli Capital invested tens of millions of USD in July 2020, with a per-share cost of 17.92 yuan, becoming one of the early shareholders of Xizhi Technology As a cornerstone investor in the Series A round, Mi Lei, founding partner of Zhongke Chuangxing, stated regarding this investment that Zhongke Chuangxing has always kept pace with academic frontiers based on its deep academic background and long-term attention to silicon photonics technology. In 2017, when Shen Yichen published a cover article titled "Deep Learning Enabled by Nanophotonic Circuits" as the first author in the journal Nature Photonics, proposing a method for deep learning computation using "on-chip integrated optical paths," Zhongke Chuangxing began to pay attention to Dr. Shen Yichen. Soon, Mi Lei quickly arranged for the team to follow up. After several communications, they invited Shen Yichen to Xi'an for in-depth discussions in May 2019. "At that time, Mi Lei made the investment decision on-site, becoming the earliest institution to confirm its entry in Xizhi Technology's Series A financing," Zhongke Chuangxing recalled. Ultimately, Zhongke Chuangxing invested a total of 36.8 million yuan through the Beijing Phase I Fund and the Pioneer Optoelectronics Fund, corresponding to a pre-IPO shareholding ratio of 2.83%. In addition, in August 2022, Zhongke Chuangxing continued to invest over 31 million yuan through the Photonic Fund, corresponding to a pre-IPO shareholding ratio of 0.51%. This increased Zhongke Chuangxing's shareholding ratio to 3.34% before the IPO, making it one of the important shareholders. Now, standing at the threshold of the capital market, these institutions that sowed seeds during the "light-chasing" phase in the laboratory and continued to support the "germination of seeds" in subsequent developments are about to reap investment returns with a heavyweight IPO. **Optical chip concept stocks have exploded, and investors have made a fortune again** Just before and after Xizhi Technology's hearing, Touzhong.com noticed that the optical chip and optical communication sectors in the A-share and Hong Kong stock markets experienced an epic "surge." As of April 14, the A-share optical communication index has surged nearly 90% this year, and the optical fiber index has risen by 88.6%, continuously setting historical highs; many core stocks have also seen significant price increases this year. For example, Zhongji Xuchuang (300308) has increased by 412%, Xinyi Sheng (300502) by 227%, and Changfei Fiber (601869) by 183%, among others. The main reason for the strength of the optical communication sector is the explosive demand for AI computing power, the iteration of optical module technology, especially the large-scale release of 1.6T optical modules, and the tight supply and demand for optical chips and optical modules, which has led to continuous inflow of market funds into the optical communication field. At the same time, the surge also reflects the market's high recognition of "light" replacing "electricity" as the core position in the next generation of computing infrastructure. In this transformation, Xizhi Technology, which focuses on the AI optical chip field, perfectly aligns with this trend. As Xizhi Technology aims to become the "world's first AI silicon photonics chip stock," its rarity is self-evident. Referring to its listed peers, although Xizhi Technology is currently small in scale, with revenue just exceeding 100 million yuan in 2025, its high compound growth rate of 66.9% and the first-mover advantage in the differentiated track of "optoelectronic hybrid computing power" provide it with significant potential after going public For investors, this eight-year "patience marathon" is about to reach its moment of realization. Looking back at the financing history of Xizhi Technology, a clear capital appreciation curve has emerged. The prospectus shows that as an early investor, Xizhi Technology's pre-investment valuation in the Series A round was only 187 million yuan, and the Series A+ and A2 rounds only climbed to 496 million yuan; during the growth phase, Xizhi Technology's valuation steadily increased in the Series B and B+ rounds, reaching 2.312 billion yuan and 3.137 billion yuan, respectively. In the Series C sprint round, Xizhi Technology's valuation rose again to 4.457 billion yuan. Compared to the post-investment valuation of 7.8 billion yuan in the last round, under this series of numbers, investors in the Series A, B, and even C rounds have achieved a paper profit of 41.57 times, 3.37 times, and 1.75 times, respectively. Of course, in this capital feast, the seed round investors who entered the market earliest are undoubtedly the biggest winners. Especially Baidu Ventures and ZhenFund, which entered in 2018 with a seed round investment of 10.7 million USD, have a very low cost basis for their shares. Calculating this way, their potential return multiples are the most substantial. If we reference recent AI hardware companies that have recently entered the capital market, then after going public, the paper profits for seed, Series A, and even mid-to-late stage investors in Series B and C of Xizhi Technology will further expand, becoming another classic case in the hard technology field. At present, with the rise of AI, the capital market is never short of "stories" and "wealth creation myths." However, for Xizhi Technology, the ultimate market value it can support still depends on the speed of its commercialization, the R&D progress of next-generation products like PACE3, and the sustained prosperity of global AI computing power demand. Nevertheless, it is an undeniable fact that these institutions that sowed seeds during the "light-chasing" phase in the laboratory are about to reap a significant IPO. The only question is, how much can investors actually earn this time? 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