The capital wind direction of the A-share market is completing a generational transition: from &#34;sauce aroma&#34; to &#34;silicon-based.&#34;
On April 17, the A-share market witnessed a change in the &#34;king of stocks.&#34; A semiconductor company that only listed in 2021—Yuanjie Semiconductor—saw its stock price touch 1,445 yuan, officially surpassing Kweichow Moutai to become the company with the highest stock price in A-share history.
Yuanjie Semiconductor's core product is a laser chip that acts as the &#34;light source&#34; for optical communication systems. Last year, its revenue was 601 million yuan, earning less than a fraction of Kweichow Moutai's revenue.
Coincidentally, on the eve of this event, Moutai had just broken its 20-plus-year &#34;undefeated record,&#34; releasing its first annual report since listing showing declines in both revenue and net profit, causing its opening market value to evaporate nearly 80 billion yuan instantly.
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The fall of the old king and the coronation of the new king converged on the same day. This was no coincidence; it signaled a major shift in capital preferences: a complete move from traditional consumption to advanced technology.
But after the frenzy, we need to see the cards clearly: Who exactly is this newly crowned &#34;stock king&#34;? How deep is its business moat? And what risks lurk behind the thousand-yuan stock price?
<h2>Stock Price Soars 1,500%, Yet Profits Are Less Than a Fraction of Moutai's: Why?</h2>
First, feel the intensity of this rally.
From an intraday low of 88.1 yuan on April 9, 2025, to a closing high of 1,445 yuan on April 17, 2026—Yuanjie Semiconductor achieved a gain of approximately 1,500% in one year. As of the close, its total market capitalization stood at about 124.2 billion yuan, with a PE (TTM) ratio reaching 650 times.
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According to the latest financial reports, the company posted a net profit of 191 million yuan in 2025, turning a loss into a profit year-over-year. In contrast, the surpassed Kweichow Moutai reported a net profit attributable to shareholders of 82.32 billion yuan in 2025.
The difference in profit scale exceeds 400 times, yet a &#34;reverse takeover&#34; occurred at the stock price level.
What does a 650 times price-to-earnings ratio mean? In the A-share market, such valuation levels typically belong to only two types of companies: either those whose earnings are just starting to climb, making the denominator approach zero; or those where the market is pricing today's stock based on profits expected three years from now.
Yuanjie Semiconductor falls into the latter category.
Driven by the AI computing power wave, the company is undergoing a structural shift from a traditional telecom chip manufacturer to a core optical chip supplier for data centers.
Data center business has seen explosive growth, with revenue reaching 393 million yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 719%, surpassing the telecom market for the first time to become the company's largest revenue source.
<h2>Founder Profile: A Technical Entrepreneur Betting on Domestic Optical Chips Upon Returning Home</h2>
Yuanjie Semiconductor's rise cannot be separated from its founder, Zhang Xingang.
Born in 1970, Zhang holds American citizenship. He graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor's degree and later earned a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Southern California. He has long been engaged in R&amp;D work on optoelectronics and semiconductor devices.
Before founding Yuanjie Semiconductor, he worked in the US optical communication industry chain, holding positions as an R&amp;D engineer and R&amp;D manager. At Source Photonics, he served as Director of R&amp;D, deeply involved in the engineering and industrialization of optical communication devices.
In 2013, he chose to return to China to start a business, establishing Yuanjie Semiconductor in Xianyang, Shaanxi, transforming his long-accumulated experience in optical chip technology toward a domestic path. The company eventually listed on the STAR Market in 2022.
Looking at his resume, his path was not typical &#34;capital-driven entrepreneurship&#34; but closer to that of an &#34;engineer-type entrepreneur&#34;—with core capabilities concentrated in the processes and manufacturing systems of optical communication devices rather than commercial expansion itself.
This also explains the company's early strategic choices: long-term focus on the high-barrier niche of laser chips, rather than rapid product line expansion.
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<h2>Its Business: Lighting Up Optical Communications</h2>
To understand Yuanjie Semiconductor more deeply, we must clarify one thing: how does data run in an AI data center?
When you use large models to process tasks, thousands of GPUs are working in collaboration behind the scenes. These GPUs need to transmit massive amounts of data, and fiber optics is currently the fastest medium. However, fiber transmits light while servers process electrical signals; someone needs to convert between them—that is the job of the optical module.
One of the most critical consumables inside an optical module is the laser chip.
In simple terms: the laser chip is the &#34;light source&#34; of optical communications. Without it, optical modules have no light to use.
In its prospectus filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Yuanjie Semiconductor positioned itself as a &#34;globally leading laser chip supplier.&#34; Its product lines cover CW laser chips, EML laser chips, and DFB laser chips, primarily applied in AI data centers, 5G communications, and fiber access scenarios.
According to Frost &amp; Sullivan data, based on external sales revenue in 2025, the company ranks among the top six global laser chip suppliers. It is the second-largest supplier of silicon photonics high-speed optical interconnect product laser chips globally and one of the few enterprises capable of mass-producing CW laser chips on a scale of tens of millions of units.
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<h2>Why Specifically at This Moment?</h2>
Optical communications is an old industry, but this round of demand surge has its uniqueness.
The key lies in two terms: speed upgrades and silicon photonics CPO.
Speed upgrades are easy to understand. Data transmission between AI servers is evolving from 400G to 800G, 1.6T, and 3.2T. Each generation upgrade means higher performance requirements for optical chips and greater quantity demands. Demand is not growing linearly but jumping in steps.
Silicon photonics CPO is a longer-term variable. Simply put, the silicon photonics solution is a technical path that integrates optical components into chips. However, this architecture requires continuous external supply of laser light sources—namely CW laser chips. As CPO scales up in the future, each optical engine will require a matching external laser, creating a new demand increment with limited substitutes.
Yuanjie Semiconductor's CW laser chips are precisely positioned at the entry point of demand in the silicon photonics + CPO era.
Supply-side factors are also adding fuel to this logic. The core raw material for laser chips is Indium Phosphide (InP), which involves complex processes and extremely high barriers. Third-party assessments suggest that insufficient InP chip capacity may lead to continued industry supply tightness through the end of 2026, while major global players' capacity expansion plans may not bring supply and demand into gradual balance until 2027–2028.
For manufacturers capable of large-scale mass production, tight supply implies stronger bargaining power and a wider window for customer introduction.
<h2>Two Moats of Yuanjie Semiconductor</h2>
According to industry insiders, Yuanjie Semiconductor's core advantages lie in two areas.
First, the depth of CW product processes. CW laser chips face extremely stringent requirements for high power, high coupling efficiency, and wide operating temperature ranges.
According to reports, the company has already mass-produced 70mW CW chips and completed deliveries. The 100mW CW chip has passed customer validation, and the 300mW high-power CW light source has achieved breakthroughs in core technologies to match CPO and silicon photonics integration needs. It has also established a screening and reliability verification system covering -40°C to 95°C. For most competitors, this road is still ahead.
Second, the full-process IDM manufacturing model. Yuanjie Semiconductor adopts the IDM (Integrated Device Manufacturer) model, covering the entire chain from chip design, epitaxial growth (MOCVD), wafer fabrication, grating/optical waveguide processes, to testing and packaging. Among domestic optical chip companies, this is a scarce existence.
Industry practitioners note: AI data centers have tolerance standards for optical devices approaching &#34;zero failures.&#34; The IDM model allows for deep customization for top-tier clients, shortening iteration cycles while building accumulation effects in yield rates and cost control.
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Expansion and Capital Resonance, Wealth Effects Amplified Rapidly
Against the backdrop of sustained demand surges, Yuanjie Semiconductor is entering a significantly accelerated expansion cycle.
Unlike the early development phase dominated by technological breakthroughs, since 2025, the company has begun implementing a dual-track strategy of &#34;capacity expansion + capital market expansion.&#34;
On one hand, the company has successively launched large-scale capacity expansion plans, focusing on building high-end optoelectronic chip manufacturing capabilities and industrializing products with speeds of 50G and above, to meet the structural demand growth brought by AI data centers.
On the other hand, the company is formally advancing its plan to issue H-shares in Hong Kong, aiming to build an &#34;A+H&#34; dual-capital platform. This move not only signifies expanded financing channels but also indicates that the company is beginning to reprice its growth space using the valuation frameworks of the global capital markets.
If past growth relied on technological breakthroughs, the keyword for this stage has shifted to &#34;capacity realization capability.&#34;
Meanwhile, the capital market is simultaneously amplifying its wealth effects.
With the rapid rise in stock prices, the shareholding value of the company's founder and actual controller, Zhang Xingang, has been significantly reassessed. His and related holdings' market value has approached the 20 billion yuan level.
Under the resonance of high growth and high valuations, this company is gradually moving from an &#34;industrial company&#34; into the category of a &#34;capital-pricing target.&#34;
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
Yuanjie Semiconductor's &#34;coronation&#34; is not the accidental market movement of a single company but a microcosm of broader structural changes.
As consumption assets enter a period of slowing growth while AI computing infrastructure enters an acceleration phase, the pricing anchor of the capital market begins to shift.
From &#34;sauce aroma&#34; to &#34;silicon-based,&#34; from consumption premiums to computing power premiums, this transition is still underway.
The true dividing line is not whether stock prices hit new highs, but whether the new growth logic can be continuously realized.
This race has only just begun.

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Yuanjie Semiconductor surged 1,500% in a year, topping the A-share market with a valuation of 650 times earnings despite profits being merely a fraction of Kweichow Moutai's. Its core lies in positioning within the 'light source' segment of optical communications—laser chips—benefiting from the AI data center boom and CPO trends, with data center revenue skyrocketing by 719%. Leveraging CW process technology and an IDM model to build barriers, it is simultaneously accelerating capacity expansion and planning a Hong Kong listing to amplify capital expectations

Up 1,500% in a Year, Surpassing Kweichow Moutai to Crown the A-Share 'New King': What Makes Yuanjie Semiconductor Stand Out?