Two hard-tech IPOs have unveiled the migration of trillion-yuan insurance capital: from traditional sectors like infrastructure and real estate to hard-tech tracks such as semiconductors and robotics. During this shift, the investment logic of insurance capital has evolved from financial investment to strategic partnership, and from high-yield bank and infrastructure stocks to new quality productive forces enterprises.

Who would bet on a company deep in losses? The answer is insurance capital. In 2023, during the industry's bitter winter, ChangXin Memory Technologies faced a difficult period, yet six insurance institutions invested 2.385 billion yuan against the tide. Three years later, as the bell tolled, ChangXin Memory Technologies topped the A-share market by market value, with insurance institutions reaping billions in paper profits. On its first day of listing, the stock surged 472%, reaching a market cap of 3.3 trillion yuan. The spotlight was on domestic DRAM, while the insurance capital in the prospectus's shareholder register also became clear. Shortly after, Unitree Robotics launched its IPO subscription at 150.80 yuan, with a market value of 60.993 billion yuan, and over 30 insurance companies invested via private equity funds.

These two hard-tech IPOs reveal the same silent migration: trillion-yuan insurance capital is moving from the "old map" of traditional sectors like infrastructure and real estate to the "new continent" of hard-tech tracks like semiconductors and robotics. Since 2026, the pace of insurance capital's secondary market stake-building has slowed significantly, replaced by frequent appearances in strategic placements, IPO cornerstone investments, and private equity fund LP lists. This year, 17 Hong Kong-listed companies have received cornerstone subscriptions from insurance capital, totaling over HK$2.5 billion, covering AI, semiconductors, biomedicine, and more.

Behind this shift, the investment logic of insurance capital has changed: from financial investment to strategic partnership, from high-yield bank and infrastructure stocks to new quality productive forces enterprises. Data from the National Financial Regulatory Administration shows that as of the end of the first quarter of this year, the balance of insurance funds in use was about 39.44 trillion yuan, surpassing the 37.53 trillion yuan of public funds for the second time. Among this, stock holdings reached 3.84 trillion yuan, approaching the 3.99 trillion yuan scale of public funds' active equity funds.

Wang Guojun, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics, noted that as long-term capital, insurance funds entering the market can reduce short-term speculative trading and stabilize the stock market. At the same time, when a large amount of insurance capital flows into hard-tech tracks, it can help tech companies overcome R&D challenges and guide market funds toward these core tech sectors, boosting their valuations. "Insurance capital is changing the 'fund structure' of A-shares, shifting the market from short-term speculation to long-term value investing, with hard-tech sectors being the biggest beneficiaries."

Direct Investment and LP Dual Strategies

The investments in ChangXin Memory Technologies and Unitree Robotics represent two approaches for insurance capital in the tech wave. For ChangXin Memory Technologies, insurance capital made direct investments. According to the prospectus, over ten insurance institutions invested in the company, with six entities—including Hexie Health Insurance, China Life Investment, PICC Capital, Sunshine Life Insurance, China Post Life Insurance, and PICC Kechuang—contributing a total of 2.385 billion yuan, holding a combined 3.96% stake before the IPO. In terms of profitability, the direct investment cost per share for these six insurers was about 1 yuan, far below the IPO price of 8.6 yuan. Based on the closing price of 49 yuan per share on the first day of listing, the market value of the six insurers' holdings was 116.851 billion yuan, with a paper profit of 114.467 billion yuan. Among them, Hexie Health Insurance alone saw a paper profit of over 43 billion yuan. If calculated based on the midday price of 54.65 yuan per share, the total paper profit for the six insurers expanded to 127.965 billion yuan, yielding a return multiple of about 53.6 times.

The investment in Unitree Robotics was a collective effort by insurance capital. Insurers did not appear directly in the IPO strategic placement list but instead invested as LPs in private equity funds through three main channels: China Internet Investment Fund, Nanjing Jingwei Chuang Sanhao, and Jinshi Growth Equity Investment, along with deeper channels like the National SME Development Fund. This is likely one of the highest levels of insurance capital participation in A-share hard-tech IPOs, involving over 30 insurance entities, including China Pacific Insurance, AIA Life Insurance, Ruizhong Life Insurance, and New China Life Insurance.

The market wonders how insurance capital, known as "patient capital," could accurately identify and profit from such star stocks as ChangXin Memory Technologies and Unitree Robotics. The journey was not easy. ChangXin Memory Technologies only turned profitable this year, having suffered long-term losses and huge capital expenditures while facing well-established foreign competitors. According to the initial prospectus, from 2022 to 2024, the company recorded net losses of 8.328 billion yuan, 16.340 billion yuan, and 7.145 billion yuan, respectively, with cumulative losses reaching 36.65 billion yuan by the end of 2025.

Zhang Yi, head of the equity asset business department at Sunshine Asset Management, told Caijing that Sunshine Life Insurance first encountered the ChangXin Memory Technologies project in early 2021 when the company was launching a new round of market financing. At that time, ChangXin was in the early stage of mass production yield ramp-up. "During the investment evaluation, we were aware of the cyclicality and volatility of the storage industry, but we also recognized the significant importance and value of ChangXin's development for China's semiconductor industry. We used the development history of Korea's storage industry as a reference sample to support our investment decision."

Recalling the trough period from 2022 to 2024, when the global storage industry entered a deep downturn and DRAM prices fell sharply, Zhang Yi noted that the company internally believed ChangXin's losses during that period were characteristic of industry cycles and enterprise stages. With capacity release, yield improvement, product upgrades, and the industry entering an upward cycle, the company was confident that the profit inflection point would be verified.

Beyond Financial Investment

It is well known that the returns on tech innovation often lag behind the investment cycle, accompanied by high failure rates and volatility. Balancing the certainty of technical barriers with the uncertainty of commercial implementation has become a key challenge for insurance capital betting on hard tech. Zhang Dedi, Party Secretary and General Manager of China Life Equity, recalled the judgment when leading the Series D investment in Biocytogen in 2019: the company was not yet profitable, its pipeline was in early stages, and commercial prospects were divided. However, she saw its underlying technology platform as an indispensable "infrastructure," with an "industry base" attribute far more strategically valuable than short-term revenue. The market validated this judgment, and the company listed on the STAR Market, becoming a dual-listed company on the H and A shares. Zhang Dedi concluded that since the launch of the STAR Market, many of China Life Equity's portfolio companies, such as United Imaging Healthcare, Sepax Technologies, and OPM Biosciences, have achieved leapfrog development through the market's institutional innovation. She emphasized that the growth cycle of hard tech is naturally longer than the capital market's evaluation cycle, and the unique value of insurance long-term capital lies in entering at critical moments when companies need "timely help," accompanying them from "seed players" to industry leaders.

In 2021, the "PICC Asset - Advanced Manufacturing Industry Fund Equity Investment Plan" was established to invest in an advanced manufacturing industry fund, channeling funds to help portfolio companies solve core technical problems. The fund led the 100 million yuan Series C investment in JAKA Robotics, helping the company navigate a key transformation stage. During a visit to JAKA Robotics, Chairman and General Manager Li Mingyang noted that early-stage collaborative robot R&D requires significant capital and personnel investment. PICC Asset's fund joined the company at a critical juncture when it was transitioning from small-scale applications to mass production, precisely when it needed long-term financial support and nurturing.

These cases highlight a trend, not an isolated incident. The underlying logic revealed is the evolution of insurance capital from "financial investors" to "strategic partners." This logic is validated by capital market data in 2026: the pace of secondary market stake-building in blue-chip stocks has slowed significantly this year. According to data from the China Insurance Association, only three insurance companies have made six stake-building moves in listed companies this year, compared to over ten insurers with more than 20 moves in the same period last year.

Insurance capital has not left the equity market but has begun a new cycle of asset reallocation, directing more funds toward offline IPO subscriptions, strategic placements, and private equity fund channels, with a focus on frontier areas such as semiconductors, AI, high-end equipment, and biomedicine. On July 10, China Life Insurance announced the establishment of a 5 billion yuan dedicated semiconductor industry fund with a total size of 5 billion yuan and an 8-year duration, targeting memory chips, wafer manufacturing, and computing chips. This is the largest single insurance capital investment in semiconductors this year.

Zhou Jin, a consulting partner at Tienyi International Financial Services, analyzed that insurance capital strategies are shifting from "secondary market stake-building" to "primary-plus lock-in share placements," upgrading from financial investors to strategic investors, and from high-yield infrastructure stocks to hard tech. This shift is driven by asset-side factors, such as declining interest rates and falling returns on fixed-income reinvestments, pushing insurance capital from fixed income to equity and equity investments, with tech becoming a key escape from interest rate spread losses. On the liability side, the transformation of floating-return products reduces short-term yield rigidity, allowing insurers to be more patient with early-stage investments and wait for IPO returns. Additionally, regulatory support for insurance capital to increase equity investments and serve new quality productive forces has opened up policy space.

Zhou Jin further explained that the transformation of insurers' floating-return products reduces the short-term rigidity of yield requirements, making insurers more patient to invest early and wait for listing opportunities to achieve higher long-term returns. The IPO lock-up strategic placement strategy also allows better classification of investments as FVOCI, helping insurers smooth profit fluctuations.

The deeper logic lies in the structural alignment between insurance funds and tech innovation in terms of time and scale. Wang Xiaohui, Party Secretary and General Manager of Huaxia Jiuyin Asset Management, noted that the liability duration of life insurance funds is 15 to 30 years, providing a super-long investment horizon and resilience to cyclical fluctuations. This aligns well with the decade-long R&D cycles of hard-tech fields like chip development and biomedicine, allowing them to accompany companies through the "valley of death." Meanwhile, the lengthy process of tech commercialization requires enormous capital, and insurance funds, with their large scale, can play a role in allocating social capital to key areas and weak links in the tech industry.

Building a New Narrative for Tech Investment

How to build a hard-tech investment map? Zhang Dedi stated that the company focuses on sectors such as semiconductors, AI, life sciences, and commercial aerospace. These tracks share common characteristics: vast market space, accelerating technology iteration, a combination of rigid demand for domestic substitution and global potential, and the possibility of nurturing world-class tech giants. What kind of tech companies are worth betting on? Zhang Dedi predicted that targets must possess three qualities: first, original underlying technology and core independent capabilities, building a global competitive tech base through high-intensity R&D; second, the ability to act as a "chain leader" in the global industrial chain, mastering discourse and pricing power within the ecosystem; and third, a global vision, flexible organizational capabilities, and strong commercial implementation skills.

Zhang Yi, drawing from the experience of investing in ChangXin Memory Technologies, summarized that first, hard-tech investment must respect industry cycle laws, relying on deep industry research to truly realize the value of patient capital. Second, investment should align with national strategies for tech self-reliance, balancing financial returns with industrial strategic value. He further stated that the company adheres to the following strategies for hard-tech investment: first, always research-driven, continuously deepening industry coverage and understanding; second, fully leveraging the characteristics of insurance funds, combining different investment products to meet the diverse financing needs of tech companies throughout their life cycles; third, strengthening cooperation with industry chain leaders, using their radiating influence to broadly support the development of the tech industry.

The flow of long-term insurance capital into hard tech is also guiding market funds toward core tech sectors. Essentially, this is a transfer of A-share pricing power from "old main lines like financial cycles" to the "new main line of tech growth." As long-term capital, insurance funds entering the market can reduce short-term speculative trading and stabilize the stock market. According to data from the National Financial Regulatory Administration, as of the end of the first quarter of 2026, the balance of insurance funds in use was about 39.44 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.9%, surpassing the 37.53 trillion yuan of public funds for the second time. Among this, insurance capital's stock holdings were 3.84 trillion yuan, approaching the 3.99 trillion yuan scale of public funds' active equity funds.

Another set of data from the National Financial Regulatory Administration shows that by the end of 2024, insurance capital had invested over 600 billion yuan in tech companies through listed stocks, direct equity investments, VC funds, and PE funds, covering core new quality productive forces tracks such as advanced manufacturing, AI, semiconductors, new energy, and biomedicine.

Jia Biao, Party Secretary and Chairman of China Insurance Investment, predicted that under the guidance of medium- and long-term capital entering the market, insurance capital's public equity allocation would form a "dual-wheel" pattern: one end focusing on stable cash flow assets like dividend stocks for steady returns, and the other end concentrating on new quality productive forces, exploring growth stocks and tech stocks. He predicted that the industry would develop a "dumbbell-shaped" allocation feature with a dividend base and tech enhancement.

Regulators have continuously used policy tools to guide insurance capital to become "patient capital" supporting new quality productive forces. In September 2023, the National Financial Regulatory Administration optimized solvency standards, reducing the risk factor for unlisted equity in strategic emerging industries to 0.4 and lowering the risk factor for STAR Market stocks from 0.45 to 0.4. In April 2025, three departments, including the NFRA, issued a document supporting insurance capital in setting up private securities funds to long-term hold equity assets. In the same month, the NFRA raised the equity asset ratio for insurers in certain tiers by 5% and increased the ratio for insurers investing in a single VC fund to 30%. In December, the risk factor for stocks held on the STAR Market for over two years was further reduced to 0.36. In March 2026, four departments jointly issued opinions encouraging insurance capital to support companies undertaking national major tech projects, strengthening investment in emerging and future industries, promoting long-term investment reform pilots, and prioritizing investment in tech companies.