A couple from Shenzhen has captured public attention by amassing a fortune through the strategic stockpiling of chips. In the current AI wave, while some succeed with models and others with computing power, this duo's foresight in securing components has led to a staggering 32 billion yuan increase in their paper wealth over just five months, propelling the story to trending status.
The husband, Li Hu, aged 51, co-founded Demingli, a Shenzhen-based memory module manufacturer, with his wife Tian Hua. Li Hu personally holds a 35.01% stake in the company. Since the beginning of the year, his paper wealth has surged by over 32 billion yuan in merely five months.
Li Hu has an eight-year background in sales, primarily dealing with flash memory controller chips and storage products. His wife, Tian Hua, previously served as a marketing director at a Shenzhen IT firm, giving her deep familiarity with product application scenarios. When they first started their business, the storage chip market presented high technical barriers and was largely dominated by international giants. They initially entered the field by acting as agents for overseas storage chips and selling flash memory modules, thereby accumulating both capital and client resources while quietly developing their own controller chip technology.
Through persistent effort, Demingli went public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2022 and promptly acquired the UD Store brand, swiftly entering the embedded storage market. Currently, the couple is riding the AI wave, supplying solid-state drives and memory modules for servers and data centers. Their products are in high demand, driving prices upward. The company's inventory balance for Q1 2025 reached 4.3951 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 177.4%. By the end of March, the inventory balance had grown to 12.19 billion yuan, up 72.7% from the end of the previous year, accounting for 66.3% of total assets.
Reports indicate that from January to March this year, Demingli generated a massive profit of 3.346 billion yuan, more than double the total profits of the past decade combined. In contrast, the company was struggling with losses during the same period last year.
In April, Li Hu led a meeting with over 30 investment institutions to explain the reasons for the performance surge—high industry prosperity and the team's proactive preparations, including forward-looking layouts in enterprise-grade, embedded, and domestic substitution segments. On May 11th, Li Hu presided over an earnings conference. That same day, Demingli's stock price rose by approximately 7%, bringing its market capitalization tantalizingly close to 150 billion yuan.
The memory chip sector, one of the most robust "core" themes in global stock markets recently, continues its strong advance. Memory chips are semiconductor devices used for data storage, widely applied in computers, mobile phones, servers, and other electronic equipment. In the digital economy era, they are regarded as the "second pole" of semiconductors, the "foundation" of the digital economy, and a "core bottleneck" in the AI age.
Driven by explosive demand from AI servers, memory prices continue to climb. Citigroup forecasts an 88% increase in the average selling price for DRAM and a 74% rise for NAND flash by 2026. The latest survey from TrendForce indicates that contract prices for general-purpose DRAM in Q2 2026 are expected to rise by 58% to 63% quarter-over-quarter, while NAND flash contract prices are projected to increase by 70% to 75%.
A CITIC Securities research report notes that memory prices have risen again since March, confirming the sustained high prosperity of the storage industry. The institution anticipates that supply shortages will persist until 2027, with price increases continuing throughout 2026, expressing firm optimism about the storage industry trend.
Bocom International Research suggests the global memory chip industry is experiencing its strongest upturn cycle this century, with greater intensity than previous cycles, and expects it to last at least until Q1 2027. Following prolonged industry consolidation, the supply side is highly concentrated. Coupled with the structural demand increment brought by AI, this cycle's duration and intensity significantly surpass those of the past.
Guotai Haitong Securities believes the ongoing supply-demand imbalance in memory continues to support price increases. Although spot market prices have shown some localized fluctuations, industry prosperity remains resilient. Currently, original manufacturers continue to shift production capacity toward AI server-related products. While demand for some consumer end-products faces potential downward revisions, constrained supply due to capacity allocation is expected to sustain the upward price trend.
(Note: Article content and data are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice. Investors assume all risks for their actions.)