Behind Changxin Technology’s Approval: State-owned Major Banks’ AIC and Insurance Funds “Team Up” to Bet on Domestic Storage

With the successful approval of Changxin Technology, the leading domestic storage chip company, a group of financial institutions representing "patient capital" have also emerged.

On May 27th, Changxin Technology Group Co., Ltd. ("Changxin Technology"), the leading domestic DRAM storage chip company, officially passed the review of the Listing Committee of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

As one of the most watched hard-tech IPOs in the capital market in recent years, Changxin Technology carries not only industry expectations for breakthroughs in domestic storage chips but also offers a key sample for observing the flow of financial resources into strategic emerging industries through its lineup of shareholders.

The prospectus shows that financial asset investment companies (AIC) or their managed funds under the five major state-owned banks—ICBC, ABC, BOC, CCB, and BoCom—have all appeared on the shareholder list. Meanwhile, six insurance institutions—Hexie Health, China Life Investment, PICC Capital, Sunshine Life, China Post Life, PICC Sci-Tech—also directly hold shares.

The concentrated entry of bank AICs and insurance funds, two types of long-term capital, signifies that the financial system's support for hard-tech fields such as semiconductors is gradually extending from traditional credit towards equity capital.

Looking at the shareholding situation, each major bank's AIC deeply participated in Changxin Technology's private placement stage, though their approaches varied somewhat.

Among them, ABC Investment holds 574 million shares with a pre-issuance shareholding ratio of 0.95%, making it the AIC institution with the highest shareholding proportion; CCB Investment holds 498 million shares, accounting for 0.83%; BOC Asset and BoCom Investment each hold 230 million shares, accounting for 0.38% each.

ICBC participated in the investment through its Emerging Industry Fund managed by its subsidiary Gongrong Jintou, with a shareholding ratio of 0.64%.

Except ABC Investment, which entered earlier in 2023, most other major bank AICs appeared during Changxin Technology's capital increase and share expansion phase in 2024. Of these, CCB Investment contributed 1.3 billion yuan, Gongrong Jintou contributed 1 billion yuan, and BOC Asset and BoCom Investment each contributed 600 million yuan.

The structure of joint participation by multiple institutions with relatively balanced single holdings not only satisfies hard-tech companies' demand for large-scale and long-term capital but also disperses the risk exposure of any single financial institution to some extent.

A similar model has also appeared in the financing structure of another domestic storage leader—Yangtze Memory Technologies.

According to Tianyancha data, BOC Asset, ABC Investment, CCB Investment, BoCom Investment, and Gongrong Jintou all hold equity stakes in Yangtze Memory Technologies, each at a holding ratio of 0.613%. With Yangtze Memory Technologies commencing IPO guidance in May this year, a similar bank capital lineup has formed behind the two domestic storage giants.

Compared to traditional VC/PE funds, bank AICs usually feature longer fund durations and stronger comprehensive financial service capabilities. Meanwhile, the semiconductor industry itself is characterized by long R&D cycles, high capital expenditures, and slow realization of returns, making the fund attributes of both parties reasonably well matched.

Besides bank capital, insurance funds have also become an important force in the shareholder structure of Changxin Technology.

Hexie Health directly holds 901 million shares before issuance, with a share ratio of 1.5%, ranking among the top ten shareholders and also being the single insurance institution with the highest shareholding ratio.

China Life Investment and PICC Capital participated through equity investment plans, with pre-issuance shareholding ratios of 0.79% and 0.78% respectively. Their underlying contributors include China Life Property Insurance, Everbright Life Insurance, and PICC Life Insurance.

In addition, Sunshine Life and China Post Life hold 0.37% each, and PICC Sci-Tech holds 0.15%.

According to the prospectus, the total committed amount of the six insurance institutions during the private placement stage reached 2.385 billion yuan.

As Changxin Technology achieves profitability in the second half of 2025 and enters the performance realization stage in the first half of 2026, this batch of early entrants of long-term capital may also expect to realize their corresponding investment returns.

However, for bank and insurance funds, which have traditionally focused on "debt-oriented thinking," truly deep participation in hard-tech equity investment still means further adjustment at the level of internal mechanisms.

How to establish internal systems that fit the investment logic of technology—regarding assessment mechanism, return evaluation, risk tolerance, and fault tolerance and liability exemption—remains a problem for this "patient capital" to solve in the next stage.

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