A remarkable story of wealth distribution is unfolding in China's A-share market. Zhu Yiming, the founder and chairman of Changxin Technology (CXMT), has made an unprecedented voluntary pledge to share his personal stake with his employees.

Changxin Technology, a leading Chinese DRAM manufacturer, recently made its debut on the STAR Market (科创板) with a market capitalization exceeding 3 trillion yuan. In a move rarely seen in the IPO landscape, the company's prospectus reveals that Zhu Yiming has voluntarily committed to distributing half of his 1.536 billion shares to his employees. Based on the market value at the time of listing, this stake is worth over 340 billion yuan.

This decade-long journey has not only enabled China's semiconductor industry to make a breakthrough from zero to one in the memory chip sector but has also brought tens of thousands of highly skilled professionals to Hefei. A group of people has transformed an industry, and a single company has reshaped a city. Now, the founder is distributing his own wealth to the team, underscoring the profound and tangible reality of the war for talent.

Founder Foregoes Personal Fortune to Reward the Team

What makes this incentive plan exceptional is that it is entirely a personal concession from the founder, with no dilution of any external shareholder equity. According to the prospectus, Changxin Technology's board previously granted Zhu Yiming 1.536 billion shares to recognize his decade-long contribution to developing the domestic DRAM industry, at a nominal cost of only 0.108 yuan per registered capital share. Zhu Yiming proactively pledged that 50% of this stake, totaling 768 million shares, would be used exclusively for employee incentives. The recipients do not include himself, and the plan will not result in any new company shares, thus ensuring the equity of investors like the Hefei State-owned Assets, National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Phase II, Alibaba, and Tencent remains completely un-diluted.

Following Changxin Technology's strong debut, the value of these shares has soared. Based on the market cap of over 3.2 trillion yuan at the close of its first trading day, the pledged stake was worth 367.5 billion yuan. Unlike many companies that launch employee incentive plans by issuing new shares or buying back stock—costs borne by all shareholders—Zhu Yiming is directly carving out a portion of his own equity, a literal "cut of his own wealth to share with the team."

For the countless technical professionals dedicated to China's domestic chip industry, this equity commitment, valued in the hundreds of billions and clearly written into the IPO documents, represents the most substantial reward for a decade of silent hard work. The plan has a three-tier time constraint for vesting. The distribution will formally commence 36 months after the company's listing (a three-year cooling-off period). The shares will be distributed in two five-year cycles, with 384 million shares allocated in the first five years and the remaining 384 million shares distributed in batches from the sixth to the tenth year. The distribution methods include directly granting employees partnership shares or selling shares and distributing the cash proceeds.

Of course, the plan comes with strong binding conditions. If an employee leaves the company before their shares are fully vested, any unvested shares will be forfeited. This mechanism is designed to deeply bind the R&D and manufacturing talent chain, aligning with the long-term industrial cycle of memory chips, which can last over a decade. Furthermore, Zhu Yiming has also committed to an exceptionally long lock-up period for his remaining shares: he will not transfer any shares for the first ten years after listing and can only sell a maximum of 20% per year in the second decade. This means the vast majority of his equity will not flow into the secondary market for at least twenty years. With this, Zhu Yiming has firmly tied his personal wealth to Changxin Technology's journey of breaking through in the domestic memory chip sector.

A Long-Awaited Return for the Venture Capital Circle

Changxin Technology's ten-year entrepreneurial journey was far from smooth. In 2016, Zhu Yiming successfully led GigaDevice (兆易创新) to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Although he had achieved personal financial freedom, he chose not to stop. At that time, DRAM, the single largest category in the semiconductor industry by volume, was long monopolized by Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, with China having almost no domestic production. Zhu Yiming was determined to fill this gap.

From the start, Zhu Yiming faced repeated setbacks. After knocking on the doors of many cities without success, Hefei extended a helping hand. After in-depth research, the two parties quickly reached an agreement, initiating the 150 billion yuan Changxin Technology dynamic memory chip base project. The story of Changxin had begun, but difficulties persisted.

"At that time, few people believed in domestic DRAM. Even IBM's fab had failed, and countries like Germany and Japan couldn't make memory chips work with their national efforts," recalled Peng Gui'e, a managing partner at Walden International (华登高科), who later invested. She noted that at the time, almost all mainstream institutions in the market had steered clear of the company. This is not hard to understand. The years Changxin was raising funds coincided with a downturn in the industry and capital cycle, low investor confidence during the pandemic, and a cooling of the STAR Market boom.

In 2021, Changxin Technology initiated a new round of financing. However, the company's products had not yet ramped up to scale, its financials were still in the red, and the path of technological catch-up was fraught with uncertainty. Yang Shengjun, a partner at Ccapital (基石资本), still remembers that most institutions were pessimistic at the time, and combined with Changxin's not-inexpensive valuation, very few were willing to continue to follow through. Looking back now, the investors who chose to believe back then are invaluable and deserve this long-awaited return.

Among them, the Hefei State-owned Assets have emerged as the biggest winners. They had assumed extremely high "mortality risk." According to the prospectus, entities such as Qinghui Jidian, Changxin Jicheng, and Hefei Jixin held a combined 45.16% of Changxin Technology before the IPO, with the Hefei State-owned Asset system holding about 36.79%. Based on a 3 trillion yuan market cap, the Hefei State-owned Assets' stake was worth over 1.1 trillion yuan.

Industrial investors who crossed over also breathed a sigh of relief. Alibaba was a major backer, investing 6.1 billion yuan in the final pre-IPO round in June 2025, becoming the largest investor in that round for a 3.85% stake. Combined with its previous investments, the Alibaba group holds a total of 4.97% of Changxin Technology, currently worth nearly 160 billion yuan. Tencent, with a 1.50% stake, ranks second among industrial investors after Alibaba, with holdings valued at 48 billion yuan. Other notable investors include NIO, which has a paper profit of over 700 million yuan; BYD, which invested 50 million yuan during Changxin's difficult fundraising period in 2020; and others like Midea, TCL, and Xiaomi.

The list of VC/PE investors is extensive, including National IC Fund Phase II, China Structural Reform Fund, CICC Capital, Ccapital, Junlian Capital (君联资本), Yanchuang Capital (燕创创投), China Merchants Capital, Walden International, Qianhai Fund of Funds, Shenzhen Capital Group (深投控), CCB International, Yunfeng Capital, Greater Bay Area Fund, CCB Investment, Life Insurance Investment, Hengxu Capital (恒旭资本), Anhui Investment Group (皖投集团), Junhe Capital (君和资本), Orient Asset Management, Hexie Health Insurance, Sunshine Insurance, Guangzhou Xinde, Lanpu Investment (兰璞投资), Xinke Capital (欣柯创投), Huafu Jiaye (华富嘉业), Advantage Capital (优势资本), Xinding Capital (新鼎资本), Gaoxin Capital (高信资本), Pro Capital (普罗资本), Xingqidaohe (星棋道和), and the AIC platforms of major state-owned banks like CCB, ICBC, ABC, BOC, and BoCom. Those who persevered have finally received their reward from time.

Retaining Talent: 'Joining a Great Company is the Best Investment'

Looking back at this wave of tech wealth creation, ordinary individuals are receiving more and more positive feedback. As another trillion-yuan market cap company, Zhongji Innolight (中际旭创), has shown, a group of its employees have achieved their wealth dreams. This year, Zhongji Innolight's multiple equity incentive plans met their vesting conditions. In May, 803 employees vested 1.63 million shares, valued at over 1.7 billion yuan based on the then-current stock price. The dividends of the era are quietly flowing to hardworking employees.

Earlier, Kunlun Tech (昆仑万维) announced plans to grant restricted shares worth approximately 1.4 billion yuan to 786 core employees. This incentive is also not a one-time payout. The plan has a maximum validity period of 48 months, with shares vesting in three tranches after a 12-month lock-up period from the grant date, at rates of 33%, 33%, and 34%. In other words, Kunlun Tech is using the next four years to bind this group of core employees more deeply to the company.

This trend of profit-sharing is happening intensely. Early this year, SK Hynix announced its performance bonus for the 2025 fiscal year, giving its 33,000 employees an average bonus of 140 million Korean won per person, equivalent to over 600,000 RMB. According to estimates by international consulting firms like Macquarie, based on current performance expectations, the average annual bonus income for a SK Hynix employee in 2026 is projected to be as high as 670 million Korean won, roughly 3.12 million RMB. This has made SK Hynix employees the "top dogs" in the South Korean job market.

For employees, choosing a company on an upward trajectory and exchanging time and professional expertise for value has become an excellent path to financial freedom. "After graduating from college, I believed there were several paths to financial freedom: the first is buying a lottery ticket, the second is buying a house, the third is finding a good company and getting stock options, and the fourth is starting a business," Xiaopeng Motors (小鹏汽车) chairman He Xiaopeng once said on Luo Yonghao's podcast.

For companies, this is undoubtedly a war for talent. A company's growth cannot be separated from the support of its people. Talent is the most valuable asset in this technological competition. As with Changxin Technology, its employee base has grown from a few hundred to nearly 20,000 over ten years, of which 6,259 are R&D personnel, accounting for 32.43% of the workforce. It is these people who have transformed the fate of that barren land in Hefei.

In its prospectus, Changxin Technology candidly stated, "The company's process technology level still has a certain gap compared to Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology, and the product structure is in a state of continuous optimization, and the company's gross profit margin level is still low compared to the top three international manufacturers." The pursuit is never achieved overnight. Acknowledging the gap only highlights the importance of retaining talent. The bell-ringing for the IPO is just the starting point; they have an even tougher battle ahead.