A new energy vehicle has hundreds of chips, and at present, nearly 90% of China's automotive chips still rely on imports, and the independent and controllable automotive chips are the key to the development of China's automobile industry.

Beijing Chenzhi Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. is mainly engaged in the R&D and design of ASIL-D automotive chips, and the shareholder lineup behind it should not be underestimated. In the past two years, Guo Yanchao, a well-known "bull scatter" in the capital market who started from the futures market, is among them. At the beginning of 2023, Guo Yanchao was admitted to the AVIC (300114. SZ) made a profit of hundreds of millions of yuan during the soaring stock price, and became the eighth largest shareholder of ST Zuojiang (delisted), also making a profit of about 100 million yuan. Many shareholders even followed the steps of this "Niu San" boss and directly copied homework.

In addition, Chen Bin, the actual controller of Chenzhi Semiconductor, is also the actual controller of the gold-securities exchange, a leading enterprise in the field of investment and customs in the domestic capital market. According to public information inquiry, there are also many companies related to the industrial chain among the companies that Chen Bin has invested in the past, such as Fersa Technology (301529. SZ), Ruida (688800.SH), GoodWe (688390. SH) and so on.

It usually takes 3 to 5 years for an automotive chip to start from the initial design tape-out, go through vehicle specification certification, model introduction verification, and finally mass production and installation. "Futures bosses" and "investment bosses" have targeted this chip company, what signal is behind this? Dare to take the lead in challenging the central domain controller chip with high technical barriers in China, what kind of company is Chenzhi Semiconductor?

　　01

"Futures bigwigs" from the secondary market

Shift to primary market semiconductors

In the information age, chips have become the basic building blocks of many products and services. With the rapid development of China's new energy vehicle market, it has gradually broken the pattern of overseas chip giants monopolizing the supply chain system of the traditional automotive industry.

From the perspective of industrial ecology, domestic chip design companies started late, and at the same time, chip manufacturing capacity is still breaking through in high-end processes. By the end of 2024, data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that the overall localization rate of automotive-grade chips has increased to 15%, but the localization rate of high-end chips has not increased significantly. At present, China's automotive chip industry chain and industrial ecology are still being cultivated, and because of this, the automotive chip industry is also in an unprecedented development space.

Investment bigwigs have a keen sense of smell and will naturally not miss the outlet. In February 2025, Beihe Zhigang (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. will take a stake in Chenzhi Semiconductor, holding 3.4483% of the shares, and behind this company is the futures boss Guo Yanchao.

Guo Yanchao is an investment tycoon who started from futures, and was a former director of Beijing State-owned Assets Operation Group, Beidahuang (600598. SH) is a senior executive of a number of leading enterprises such as Beidahuang Group, Shounong Food Group, Beijing Grain Group, and Jiusan Grain and Oil.

At present, Guo Yanchao directly holds shares in 15 private equity funds, and has invested in Sino Medical (688108. SH), Sanyuan Co., Ltd. (600429. SH) and CSSC Special Gas (688146.SH) (exited), with as many as 395 surviving companies investing in foreign indirect investment, covering scientific research and technical services, manufacturing, software, retail, construction, finance, agriculture and forestry and other industries.

Source: Canned Gallery

Guo Yanchao has long been fond of the concept of chips, and in 2023, ST Zuojiang's stock price soared due to the concept of DPU (data-centric dedicated processor) chips, once rising from less than 100 yuan to a maximum of 299.8 yuan per share, known as "the most expensive ST stock in history". At that time, Guo Yan was super fast in and out, and his profit range in ST Zuojiang was about 66.83 million yuan to 243 million yuan, showing his agile investment style.

Whether Guo Yanchao invests in futures or the stock market, most of the time he is at ease, and he is also very clear about the cutting of long-term and short-term investments. In 2025, Guo Yanchao will enter the semiconductor chip company in the primary market, what is the charm of Chenzhi Semiconductor that makes Guo Yanchao, who is keen on secondary market investment, blue-eyed? Will he be able to continue his fortune creation legend in the future?

　　02

Chenzhi Semiconductor competes for the 100 billion market track

Guo Yanchao is an investor who is good at taking advantage of the situation.

Since 2015, China's production and sales of new energy vehicles have ranked first in the world for 10 consecutive years. In 2024, the electrification penetration rate of new vehicles in China will exceed 47.6%. According to the information of the Passenger Car Association, in the fourth quarter of 2024, the domestic market sales of self-owned brand new energy passenger vehicles accounted for 90.7%.

With the acceleration of vehicle electrification, networking and intelligence, the market potential of the automotive chip industry is huge. According to market research company Omdia, the global automotive chip market is expected to reach $80.4 billion by 2025. In 2022, the domestic automotive chip market size will be US$15.8 billion, and it is expected that by 2025, the domestic auto chip market will reach US$21.6 billion, with a compound growth rate of 11.1% in the next three years. According to the forecast of the consulting company SA, the global automotive semiconductor market will be close to 100 billion US dollars in 2027, and nearly 100 billion yuan in China.

China and global automotive chip market size from 2015 to 2025 (USD billion).

Data sources: Omdia, BYD Semiconductor "Prospectus", Dongguan Securities

According to the grade, chips can usually be divided into consumer grade, industrial grade, automotive grade, military aerospace grade, etc. Compared with consumer-grade chips, automotive-grade chips have higher requirements for reliability and security, a longer certification process, and a higher threshold for entering car companies and Tier1 (first-tier suppliers in the automobile manufacturing industry).

Among the vehicle specification chips, taking the central domain controller chip as an example, the technical barriers are high, and there is no domestic enterprise mass production. At present, the S32G produced by NXP in the Netherlands almost monopolizes the global central domain controller market, and the localization rate of mass production in China is almost 0, and the localization of the chip is an important part of the independent and controllable task of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. And Chenzhi's entrepreneurial goal is to gnaw this most difficult bone.

Zhang Xiaorong, president of the Deep Science and Technology Research Institute, believes that the semiconductor industry is one of the main battlefields for China's scientific and technological breakthrough in the next decade. The automotive-gauge chip track is particularly noteworthy - this track not only has a 100-billion-level market space, but also carries the strategic mission of industrial chain security. The threshold for ASIL-D chips is very high, and Chenzhi has its courage to choose this track, and its core advantage product application scenarios are clear and have sufficient technical thresholds; However, like other automotive chip companies, they also face double risks: the "valley of death" of vehicle specification certification and the reverse price strangulation of international manufacturers.

As the core shareholder of Chenzhi Semiconductor, this cross-border investment is also worth paying attention to, from the perspective of customers served by the gold securities exchange, its main business covers IPO, refinancing, mergers and acquisitions, etc., with a total of more than 1,000 customers. The analysis of its investment logic lies in that, on the one hand, it looks at the long-term investment value of the semiconductor industry. On the other hand, it can give full play to the advantages of customers and channels of gold-securities exchange, and provide Chenzhi with "capital + resources" dual empowerment. Perhaps this is the real reason why the gold securities exchange bowed into the game.

According to the data of China's listed company network, from 2020 to 2024, Gold-Securities Connect has served more than 400 A-share companies to complete IPO listings, and its market share has ranked first in the industry for five consecutive years. According to market information, as of March 12, a total of 18 A-share companies have completed IPO listings since 2025, and 9 companies have been served by the Gold-Securities Exchange, with a market share further increased to 50%.

At the same time, Zhang Xiaorong said that if Chenzhi can complete mass production verification around 2026, it will take the first place in the field of domestic central domain controller chips, with a first-mover advantage. Of course, the chip industry is "half 90 miles away", and it is still recommended to focus on the yield rate of its first chip and the fixed-point progress of car companies.

　　03

Build a chip R&D matrix

What are the advantages of Chenzhi?

Control the car with voice commands and control the operation of the vehicle with gestures. Automatic parking, lane keeping, automatic lane change and other functions make many novices become old drivers in seconds; With adaptive cruise, you can take a break and grab a cup of coffee on a long drive.

As an indispensable means of transportation in people's lives, it is obviously not enough to ensure "usable" and "convenient", and it is more important to ensure safety and reliability under the premise of the rising level of intelligent network connection of automobiles. This tests the R&D team's ability to define products, realize technology and innovate.

Chenzhi's R&D team has a high-end vehicle specification domain control chip with mature landing experience, and a team that develops world-class mobile phone SoC chips and their supporting software and hardware systems from scratch, with more than 95% of the full-time team being R&D personnel, and the core technical team has more than 20 years of R&D experience. Among them, there are technical leaders from international manufacturers such as Marvell, NXP, and MediaTek; There are also hardware team leaders and baseband software platform R&D leaders of Zheku, and the whole team completely covers the whole process of IC design, hardware system R&D and software development, and has successful R&D and mass production experience of many star products of automotive specifications and mobile phone large chips.

Source: Canned Gallery

Compared with the current mainstream overseas products in the industry, the C1 series products independently developed by Chenzhi have the following advantages: the use of multi-core heterogeneous architecture, the implementation of CAN, LIN and Ethernet through hardware, as well as the security encryption engine and multiple high-performance processors, to meet the automotive ASIL-D level functional safety requirements. It can realize high-speed and various types of network data processing, and has the characteristics of high functional safety, low latency and high energy efficiency. In addition, the C1 chip realizes hardware encryption, and in addition to the general international encryption algorithm, it can also support national cryptography; With the largest number of interfaces in its class, customers can connect more peripherals to meet more and more complex central domain controller functional requirements.

To stand out in a field full of large factories and fierce competition, for domestic start-ups like Ruchenzhi, every step requires effort, and it is a huge challenge. For the domestic automotive chip industry, this is just the beginning, and the future is full of infinite possibilities.

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