After a year of preparing for an A-share listing and undergoing multiple guidance periods, Kaos IoT Technology Co., Ltd., the industrial internet unicorn under the Haier Group, officially abandoned its A-share plan for Hong Kong at the end of January 2026, submitting its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Leveraging Haier's four decades of manufacturing experience and mass customization model, Kaos has developed the well-known COSMOPlat industrial internet platform. As global manufacturing accelerates its digital and intelligent transformation, can this technology giant with deep manufacturing roots establish a leading position in the era of industrial AI through capital market empowerment?

The core competitiveness of Kaos stems not from pure laboratory algorithms but is rooted in the Haier Group's forty years of smart manufacturing practice and mass customization experience. Its self-developed COSMOPlat industrial internet platform is defined as an integrated end-cloud digital solution, which models and codifies industrial knowledge and experience into software via its BaaS (Best Practice as a Service) engine. Technologically, Kaos has built a full-stack capability spanning from edge computing for IoT sensing at the base layer, to an industrial operating system and industrial brain in the middle layer, and up to industrial AI software at the top layer. This architecture enabled it to capture a 1.2% market share in China's platform-based industrial data intelligence solutions market in 2024, ranking first in the industry. However, this leading position exists alongside a highly fragmented market, where the top three players combined hold only a 3.3% share, indicating that no single giant has yet established absolute monopoly power. The competitive focus remains on deep penetration into vertical industries and cross-system integration capabilities.

Kaos's revenue pillars are composed of data intelligence solutions and IoT solutions. The data intelligence business focuses on smart manufacturing and green manufacturing, offering closed-loop services from R&D and production to energy and carbon management for enterprises through software products like COSMO-Sphere. The IoT business emphasizes the integration of software and hardware for intelligent controllers. A key point for investors to note is that despite the narrative emphasizing "intelligence" and "platform" attributes, the revenue structure still shows a distinct bias towards hardware over software. From 2023 to the first nine months of 2025, IoT solutions contributed over 70% of revenue. However, the gross margin for this business has long hovered around 12.7%, dragging down the company's overall gross margin. In contrast, the proportion of data intelligence solutions, with a gross margin exceeding 30%, has been increasing yearly, rising from 18.3% in 2023 to 29.0% in the first nine months of 2025. Nonetheless, the company's overall gross margin remains below 20%, still lagging behind pure software or platform-based technology companies.

Notably, with the support of AI technology, the company's Tianzhi large model has been implemented in multiple agent applications within high-value industries like petrochemicals and automotive, such as aldehyde separation tower process optimization and indicator diagram intelligent assistants. This vertical modeling capability based on industry know-how is key to maintaining its 1.2% market share moat. However, the extreme fragmentation of industrial scenarios poses a significant challenge to the generalization ability of large models, with each cross-industry replication implying high customization costs. In response, Kaos acquired Shanghai Tansuo to strengthen its green manufacturing portfolio and divested Kaos Mould to shed inefficient non-core assets. These "trimming fat and building muscle" moves reflect management's urgency to optimize asset quality and direct capital expenditure towards the more promising development of industrial AI agents.

Looking at the overall financial performance, Kaos reported revenues of 4.994 billion yuan, 5.069 billion yuan, and 4.421 billion yuan for 2023, 2024, and the first nine months of 2025, respectively. In terms of profitability, the company experienced rapid growth, turning a loss of 82.72 million yuan in 2023 into a profit of 65.14 million yuan in 2024, and further increasing its profit to 176 million yuan in the first nine months of 2025. This explosive profit growth is attributed partly to the increasing weight of higher-margin software business and partly to financial optimization measures. The divestment of the Kaos Mould business not only eliminated a loss-making drag but also contributed significant disposal gains in 2025. Furthermore, government subsidies play a substantial role in the profit composition. The prospectus shows recognized government subsidies of 97.6 million yuan and 79.7 million yuan for 2023 and 2024, respectively, both exceeding the total net profit for those years. This implies that excluding non-recurring gains/losses and policy subsidies, the endogenous profitability of Kaos's core operations remains at a stage of marginal gains.

Currently, the market's primary concern regarding the Kaos IPO revolves around its ties with its parent company, the Haier Group. As a product incubated within Haier, the Haier Group is not only the controlling shareholder of Kaos but also its largest customer and supplier. Revenue derived from the Haier Group decreased from 72.2% in 2023 to 57.7% in the first nine months of 2025. While the declining trend is evident, it still constitutes over half of the company's performance. This characteristic of being "born from Haier, rooted in Haier" undoubtedly provided Kaos with a unique testing ground in "lighthouse factories" and a stable revenue base during its initial stages. However, it also leads to a discount in its valuation due to perceived limitations in market-driven competitiveness. Although Kaos is attempting to demonstrate the generalization capability of its BaaS engine by establishing benchmark cases with third-party clients like Chery Automobile and Tsingtao Brewery, with third-party client revenue share rising to 41.1%, the fairness of pricing in related-party transactions and their sustainability remain key scrutiny points for the capital market.

Additionally, a risk factor that cannot be ignored is potential credit risk. The prospectus indicates that the net impairment loss on financial and contract assets surged from 4.66 million yuan in 2023 to 25.59 million yuan in the first three quarters of 2025. The increase in impairment losses also reflects the growing complexity of managing credit risk across a more diverse customer base during its expansion.

Looking ahead, Kaos's strategic blueprint clearly points towards "full data application" and global expansion. The company plans to allocate the proceeds from this listing primarily to the continuous upgrade of its industrial large model and the development of high-value industrial AI agents, aiming to drive a business flywheel through its AI technology system and achieve a leap from device connectivity to value creation. Furthermore, overseas market development has become a new growth driver for Kaos. Its overseas revenue reached 709 million yuan in 2024, with its proportion of total revenue continuously increasing. Leveraging Haier's global industrial layout, the company is accelerating the increase of its overseas revenue share, striving to occupy a key node in the global industrial digital and intelligent landscape.

Amid the dual resonance of policy support and industrial transformation, Kaos, with its full-stack capability of "platform + software + hardware," is evolving from an industry pioneer to a builder of the industrial internet ecosystem. Standing at an inflection point for value release amidst the massive wave of manufacturing restructuring, the question remains: can Kaos deliver a convincing report card to the secondary market on its ability to reduce reliance on its parent company?