On February 9, 2026, Jiangsu Weiheng Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. officially submitted its listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, marking the beginning of a significant capital drama involving academics, financial magnates, and industry giants.

Founded in 2017 by Fudan University Professor Sun Yaojie, this Wuxi-based energy storage "dark horse" has achieved a valuation of 27 billion yuan. Behind its "AI" narrative and its ranking as eighth globally and third overseas in commercial and industrial energy storage shipments lies a complex capital strategy orchestrated by Hong Kong's "Shell King," operations by Jack Ma's Yunfeng Financial, and industrial maneuvers by "King Ning" CATL. The company also faces intense challenges in a highly competitive market.

Notably, since 2026, Chinese energy storage companies have initiated a wave of IPOs in Hong Kong. Established players like Eve Energy, Sunwoda, DeYe, Narada Power, Penghui Energy, Shuangdeng, and Inovance Technology are seeking dual listings, while newcomers such as Yuanxin Energy Storage and Sige New Energy are also entering the fray. Compared to its peers, Weiheng Intelligent's valuation and market share remain relatively small.

Against the backdrop of Haichen Energy Storage's pioneering IPO push in 2025 and Guoxia Technology's successful listing, Weiheng Intelligent's move not only reflects the collective anxiety over capital scarcity in the energy storage sector but also highlights the critical question of whether technology-driven companies can survive the squeeze between major capital and industry giants.

01 Fudan Professor's 19-Year Journey to IPO

Weiheng Intelligent's leader, Sun Yaojie, is a quintessential scholar-entrepreneur. As a professor and doctoral advisor at Fudan University's School of Intelligent Robots and Advanced Manufacturing, he brings over 33 years of experience in electronic engineering and the energy sector. His career spans industry, academia, and research, including roles as an engineer at an institute under China Aviation Industry Corporation and a lecturer at Xi'an Jiaotong University. From 2007 to 2014, he served as Director and Chief Technology Officer at Jiangsu Zhaofu New Energy Co., Ltd., a leading photovoltaic inverter company.

Zhaofu New Energy later became the core subsidiary of AISWEI. In 2011, it merged with Jiangsu Aisuo New Energy to form Zhaofu Aisuo. This experience gave Sun a profound understanding of the new energy industry. During the solar industry downturn in 2012, despite its technological leadership, Zhaofu Aisuo was forced to sell due to cash flow problems, being acquired by German inverter giant SMA Group. Post-acquisition, the company quickly declined in the domestic market due to cultural clashes and strategic differences.

From 2013 to 2016, SMA acquired 100% of Zhaofu Aisuo in stages, and the company entered its "SMA" era. This "Zhaofu setback" taught Sun a painful lesson: "The new energy industry is driven by both technology and capital; neither can be neglected." This realization set the stage for the subsequent entry of Hong Kong's "Shell King" and a series of complex capital maneuvers at Weiheng Intelligent.

With a newfound respect for capital, Sun founded Weiheng Intelligent in 2017 with a team of Fudan doctoral students and several former SMA engineers. This time, he was no longer just a technology evangelist. From the outset, he emphasized a dual focus on technology and capital, recognizing that in the fiercely competitive energy storage sector—with over 130,000 companies vying for position—laboratory technological advantages alone were insufficient without strong financial backing to avoid past mistakes.

The company adopted a "overseas first, domestic later" strategy, targeting high-barrier markets like Europe and Australia as testing grounds for its products. It developed a "dual-team drive" model for simultaneous hardware and software development. Reportedly, over 50% of its R&D staff work on BMS/EMS software. Its online operation and maintenance system enables remote diagnostics and OTA updates, reducing product failure rates to nearly zero, significantly below the industry average of 2%. Based on annual shipments of 10,000 units, this lower failure rate alone avoids approximately 4 million yuan in losses, and combined with reduced after-sales labor costs, translates into tens of millions of yuan in annual cost savings.

In terms of business structure, the company has established commercial and industrial energy storage as its core pillar. Revenue surged to 222 million yuan in 2024 from 89 million yuan the previous year. Its contribution to total revenue jumped from 33.3% in 2023 to 82.6% in 2024, remaining dominant at 69.4% in the first nine months of 2025. The share of generation and grid-side projects contracted from 59.4% to 19.7%, while residential energy storage steadily increased to 10.1%, forming a diversified product portfolio.

Overseas markets became a key growth driver, with their revenue share soaring from 14.5% in 2023 to 50.6% in 2024, and remaining high at 44.7% in the first three quarters of 2025. Europe contributed nearly 80% of overseas revenue.

02 75-Year-Old "Shell King" Gains Control with 50 Million Yuan Investment; CATL's Largest Single Bet in Energy Storage

If Sun Yaojie provided the technological DNA, then Hong Kong's legendary capital figure, "Shell King" Gao Zhenshun, built the springboard for its soaring valuation. Gao, who has appeared on the Forbes Hong Kong Rich List, was ranked 49th with a fortune of $1.07 billion in 2016. A decade later, his wealth is estimated to exceed 10 billion yuan.

According to the prospectus, in 2021, through his wholly-owned Reorient Electric Power, Gao invested a total of 20 million yuan in two tranches to acquire a 57.14% controlling stake in Weiheng Intelligent from state-owned and Fudan-affiliated shareholders. Adding a 29.85 million yuan capital increase by Shanghai Juhengxin in October 2022, Gao's total investment did not exceed 50 million yuan, differing from some reports citing $30 million. He currently controls approximately 56.95% of the company through a complex ownership structure, with his daughter Gao Yingxin serving as a non-executive director.

Born in 1951 in Fujian, Gao is a self-made capital operator renowned for his skill in restructuring "shell" companies. He successfully engineered the transformation of China WindPower into a clean energy business. After taking control of Weiheng Intelligent, Gao swiftly initiated a textbook "capital reorganization," relocating its headquarters to Wuxi for better industrial resources and implanting a mature "Reorient" governance structure.

Key management appointments included 41-year-old Xu Yuanyuan as General Manager and Executive Director, a veteran with 17 years of investment and industry integration experience. Guo Ce and Lin Sitong were appointed as Executive Director/Legal Counsel and CFO, respectively. Gao Yingxin, an Executive Director at Yunfeng Financial, was appointed as a non-executive director and later a strategic consultant in 2022.

Through these personnel changes, Gao established robust financial and legal frameworks, laying a solid foundation for subsequent financing and the Hong Kong IPO. Intriguingly, the prospectus shows that the controlling shareholder, Reorient Electric Power Investment Ltd., and Reorient Capital Markets are wholly owned by Gao. While no further legal ownership details are disclosed, they maintain exceptionally close ties with the veteran brokerage Reorient Group, sharing a brand and a Hong Kong office address, forming a discreet yet powerful capital network.

This background also reveals connections between Weiheng Intelligent and prominent figures like Jack Ma and Zhao Wei. In 2015, Gao restructured the struggling Asia TeleMedia, renaming it Reorient Group and selling it for nearly 2.7 billion yuan to a consortium including Ma's Yunfeng Fund, netting a tenfold return. Reorient Group was briefly renamed "Yunfeng Financial" in 2016, and Reorient Capital Markets temporarily became "Yunfeng Securities." Financial reports show Gao served on Reorient Group's board from 2011, retaining a 9.55% stake and a non-executive director role even after Ma's acquisition until 2018. Interestingly, Zhao Wei's ex-husband Huang Youlong also served as a non-executive director during that period.

This history of name changes and board affiliations demonstrates Gao's influence within top capital circles, adding a layer of mystery to Weiheng Intelligent's IPO story beyond its core technology.

A more significant turning point was the entry of CATL. In Pre-A and A funding rounds, CATL's subsidiary, Chendao Capital, led investments through Yibin Green Energy, injecting 36 million yuan and 50 million yuan, respectively. After the recent B+ round, Yibin Green Energy holds a 4.81% stake. Sources indicate that Chendao Capital's interest stemmed from Weiheng Intelligent's procurement business with CATL, making this Chendao's largest investment in the energy storage sector to date.

CATL's involvement extends beyond financial investment to comprehensive industrial support. By 2025, CATL had become one of Weiheng Intelligent's top five customers, indicating a shift from capital ties to two-way business collaboration. Sources report that CATL provides critical support, including priority battery supply, favorable payment terms, pricing advantages, channel sales, and overseas project delivery. This "blood-transfusion" style of support gives Weiheng Intelligent a significant competitive edge.

From the "Shell King's" low-cost entry to "King Ning's" industrial backing, Weiheng Intelligent completed several funding rounds over three years, raising over 500 million yuan cumulatively. It attracted follow-on investments from industry players like Inovance Technology, Jinpan International, China Electric Equipment, Industrial Bank, and Tsinghua Investment, seeing its valuation soar from 1 billion yuan to 2.7 billion yuan.

03 Serious Challenges Beneath the AI Narrative

Weiheng Intelligent's core story to investors is "AI empowerment + digital energy," similar to other companies seeking Hong Kong listings. Reportedly, using its self-developed AI algorithm platform and virtual power plant, it dynamically optimizes charge/discharge strategies in mature markets like Australia and Europe by accurately predicting electricity prices and load fluctuations, boosting project returns by over 30% compared to traditional models. Through its "overseas first" strategy, it has deployed over 600 energy storage projects in more than 50 countries. In the first nine months of 2025, its residential energy storage毛利率 turned positive, improving from -27.3% in 2024 to 5.0%.

Amid surging overseas demand for commercial and industrial storage, its financials appear strong. Revenue grew slightly from 267 million yuan in 2023 to 268 million yuan in 2024, then surged 281.5% year-on-year to 476 million yuan in the first three quarters of 2025. Gross profit jumped from 22 million yuan to 90.8 million yuan, with the毛利率 rising from 8.3% to 19.1%.

However, four major concerns lie beneath the surface: First, the credibility of its industry ranking is questionable. The prospectus cites Frost & Sullivan data claiming it ranked eighth globally and third overseas in commercial and industrial energy storage shipments as of September 2025. Yet, it did not appear in the top ten of the China Energy Storage Alliance's 2024 user-side ranking. By January 2026, its cumulative global energy storage solution sales were only 1.26 GWh, and its WHES OS platform managed over 600 stations with a total capacity of 953.47 MWh. In contrast, peers like Ronghe Yuanchu have surpassed the "10 GWh" management threshold, raising doubts about the "global eighth" claim and suggesting selective use of rankings to support its market narrative.

Second, its profitability foundation is fragile. Although losses narrowed to 40.4 million yuan in the first nine months of 2025, with the loss ratio shrinking significantly from 132.3% to 8.5%, the company remains unprofitable, accumulating 399 million yuan in losses over the past three years. The average selling price of its energy storage systems plummeted 38% from 1.67 yuan/Wh in 2023 to 1.04 yuan/Wh by September 2025. Its 19.1%毛利率 heavily relies on higher-priced overseas markets, facing pressure as giants like Sungrow Power Supply expand aggressively. More alarmingly, its inventory turnover days surged to 372.8 days in 2024 before falling to 202.1 days, indicating ongoing high inventory risk.

Third, its产能 structure misaligns with industry trends. In the first three quarters of 2025, its commercial and industrial storage产能 was 4.28 GWh, but utilization was only 77.5%, requiring third-party processing. Residential storage产能 was a mere 72 MWh. Generation and grid-side projects almost entirely rely on outsourcing, and the prospectus admits this business is "not a primary strategic focus," diverging from the industry's shift towards large-scale, long-duration storage.

Fourth, there is significant overlap among customers and suppliers. A single customer contributed 59.4% of revenue in 2023. Notably, a top-five supplier and a top-five customer are the same entity—a leading power and storage battery giant listed in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, most likely CATL. The prospectus shows Weiheng Intelligent makes large-scale battery and component purchases from this entity while also selling residential and commercial storage solutions to it.

This entity has been the largest supplier for three consecutive years. Purchases from it rose from 11.7% of total procurement in 2023 to 34.2% in the first nine months of 2025, with cumulative purchases reaching 276 million yuan from 2023 to date. Sales to this customer contributed 187 million yuan in revenue during the first three quarters of 2025. This two-way binding has strong characteristics of related-party transactions, offering synergies but also amplifying supply chain concentration risks.

Sun Yaojie once predicted, "In three to five years, a large number of companies will exit this industry; a process of natural selection will eventually lead to a return to fundamentals." Now, as Weiheng Intelligent stands at the threshold of a Hong Kong listing, its ability to prove its independent value amidst pressure from giants, intense competition with 900 rivals, and complex capital strategies will depend on whether its AI algorithms can deliver commercial value in the evolving electricity reform landscape. This is not only a test for the capital markets but also a microcosm of the Chinese energy storage industry's journey towards high-quality development.