A new Sichuan stock king has been born.
This week, Chengdu Superpure Applied Materials Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Superpure Materials”) officially launched its IPO on the ChiNext board. Its stock price skyrocketed on the first day, surging over 700% intraday, pushing its market value beyond the 50 billion yuan mark.
With an opening price of 450 yuan per share, Superpure Materials instantly surpassed New Exam-Link to become the highest-priced company in Sichuan’s A-share sector. By Friday's close, its share price had risen to 538 yuan per share.
This surge not only skyrocketed the wealth of the company's two founders—brothers Chai Jie and Chai Lin—but also provided substantial financial rewards for a group of early core employees and technical backbone personnel. The ChiNext board has witnessed another hard-tech wealth creation story.
Sichuan Brothers Ring the Bell Together, Stock Soars 700% on Debut
This is a story of brotherly partnership in entrepreneurship.
The younger brother, Chai Jie, graduated with a bachelor's degree in Radio Technology from Nanjing University of Science and Technology. After a brief stint at the Southwest Institute of Technical Physics, he ventured into the foreign trade industry. During this time, Chai Jie clearly realized that semiconductor precision materials would be a fortress that China's manufacturing industry must conquer in the future.
Until 2005, he made a bold decision: resign and start a business. Chai Jie founded Superpure Materials in Shuangliu District, Chengdu. The company started with special ceramics and precision machining, but its ultimate goal was always advanced manufacturing coating components—a field then still largely monopolized by overseas giants.
Entrepreneurship is brutal. Faced with a market dominated by giants like Korea's KoMiCo and Japan's TOCALO, Superpure Materials had almost no foothold. To survive and to fund R&D, the company had to rely on businesses like precision optics and aerospace special ceramics to "feed" itself.
By 2008, the older brother, Chai Lin, formally joined the company full-time, becoming another crucial engine for Superpure Materials. Chai Lin is a graduate of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, with a background in core technologies of precision optics and special coatings. He previously worked at the Chengdu Precision Optical Engineering Research Center and later served as a senior engineer at the Beijing Representative Office of Germany's Leybold Optics, gaining deep exposure to global top-tier coating manufacturing processes.
The two brothers have clear roles within the company. Chai Jie serves as Chairman and General Manager, overseeing overall operations and market expansion. Chai Lin serves as Director and Chief Engineer, taking full charge of R&D and technological breakthroughs. After Chai Lin fully took over Superpure Materials' R&D system in 2009, the company's strategic focus finally shifted entirely to the semiconductor equipment special coating components track.
At that time, there were no domestic reference models; almost everything had to be tried and learned from scratch. Even if qualified samples were produced in the lab, they had to withstand thousands of cycles of repeated production without error under the plasma bombardment and highly corrosive gases inside etching machines.
A turning point came in 2011. After multiple rounds of rigorous testing, Superpure Materials officially entered AMEC's supply chain, securing a truly critical entry ticket into the semiconductor arena—this also marked the first time domestic special coating components entered the procurement system of a leading domestic etching equipment manufacturer. In 2016, the company's products began batch supply to Naura, expanding the map of domestic substitution.
In 2020, Superpure Materials achieved a technological leap, with its products successfully supporting 5nm process etching equipment, truly reaching the technical threshold of global advanced processes and becoming one of the few domestic enterprises mastering mass production capabilities for coatings at this level. From 2023 to 2025, the company's revenue grew from 169 million yuan to 496 million yuan, with a three-year compound growth rate exceeding 71%. The revenue share of semiconductor coating components business surpassed 95%. Superpure Materials has also grown into a national-level "Little Giant" specializing in niche sectors with cutting-edge technologies.
The moment of ringing the bell comes 21 years after Chai Jie founded the company—a massive surge post-opening, exceeding 700% on the first day. This long entrepreneurial marathon for the Sichuan brothers has finally borne fruit.
Super Returns, a Group of Employees See Their Wealth Soar
This is the most profitable new stock on the ChiNext board this year.
Superpure Materials had an issue price of 65.99 yuan. Based on one lot of 500 shares, the opening price of 450 yuan translates to a paper profit per lot of approximately 192,000 yuan. At the intraday high of 554.73 yuan, the maximum paper profit per lot was nearly 244,400 yuan. Based on the closing price of 503 yuan, the paper profit per lot is still close to 220,000 yuan, setting a new record for IPO gains on the ChiNext board since the implementation of the registration system.
Translating over two decades of entrepreneurial perseverance into tangible capital market wealth, this dividend first flowed to the brothers at the helm, Chai Jie and Chai Lin. According to the prospectus, the brothers directly hold a combined 46.88% of shares. On the first day of trading, their combined paper market value was approximately 24.02 billion yuan.
It is worth noting that Superpure Materials' employees also get to share in this IPO joy.
According to the prospectus, Superpure Materials has established a two-tier employee incentive system—
The first tier consists of two limited partnership employee shareholding platforms, Jiazehechang and Jiatianhexin, covering early core R&D, sales, and production management personnel.
The second tier is the Huatai Superpure Stock Home No.1 ChiNext Employee Asset Management Plan, with a strategic placement of 2.546 million shares, accounting for 10% of the total new shares issued. It covers over 200 personnel including factory supervisors, R&D engineers, process technicians, and core business managers, with a 12-month lock-up period.
For these frontline technical and business personnel, this listing dividend does not come from short-term speculation but is a reward given by time. By binding personal growth with the company's breakthrough and persevering through long technological battles, ordinary practitioners can also share in the value brought by the rise of the hard-tech industry.
Of course, the backstage investors are also part of the story.
The earliest institutional investor, SDIC Venture Capital, invested in Superpure Materials in June 2022, ultimately becoming the third-largest shareholder with a 6.33% stake. AMEC, a major customer of Superpure Materials, is also one of its earliest industrial capital investors, holding a 4.26% stake before the IPO.
Then there is BYD, which invested 96.9 million yuan in April 2024 to acquire old shares and subscribe to new registered capital, ultimately holding a 4.58% stake and ranking as the fourth-largest shareholder. Including this IPO's strategic placement, BYD invested a total of 126.9 million yuan. Its current paper profit now exceeds 1.8 billion yuan.
Other investors also include Jidian Chantou, Shangqi Capital, TCL Capital, Cornerstone Capital, Suzhou Woyan Capital, Zhenghai Capital, Gaoxin Xindongneng, Fengnian Capital, etc. In the strategic placement round, entities like Shanghai Xinzhi Times under Huahong Group, Changcun Hongtu associated with Yangtze Memory Technologies, Beijing Electronic Control Industrial Investment, Chengdu High-Tech Investment Group, and CNNC Capital also increased their stakes.
Staying in Hometown, Chengdu's New Elite Rises
Examining this wave of development, Sichuan is cultivating a group of technology elites deeply rooted in their hometown.
The most impressive is perhaps New Exam-Link, a core leader in the AI computing power chain. Its founder, Gao Guangrong, is from Leshan, but his career is almost entirely rooted in Chengdu. Having深耕 (deeply cultivated) the optical communication sector for over a decade, he did not choose to move south to Shenzhen or Suzhou, the traditional hubs for optoelectronics. Instead, he based all his entrepreneurial, R&D, and manufacturing activities in Chengdu, achieving mutual success with the region.
Amid the global AI computing power wave, New Exam-Link's market value has surpassed 600 billion yuan, making it a benchmark enterprise in China's optical module industry.
Coincidentally, the headquarters of New Exam-Link and Superpure Materials are only about ten minutes apart by car, both located in the Shuangliu Industrial Park, forming a unique industrial landscape.
Looking further along the industrial chain, more local technological innovation forces are taking root in Chengdu.
In the biopharmaceutical track, Bio-Thera Solutions started from Wenjiang District, Chengdu. Its founder, Zhu Yi, based in Sichuan, persevered in developing bispecific antibodies and ADC innovative drugs, secured billions of dollars in overseas cooperation orders, and grew into a force to be reckoned with in China's innovative drug field. A few days ago, Bio-Thera Solutions, with an A-share market value exceeding 120 billion yuan, submitted its application for listing on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, formally aiming for a "A+H" listing.
Unlike some regions known only for founders who venture out, Chengdu's unique trait might be that a large number of technology entrepreneurs choose to anchor the starting point of their careers in their hometown.
As these enterprises grow, they in turn nourish the local industrial ecosystem—just as Superpure Materials' expansion of its Meishan production base drives the落地 (landing) of upstream and downstream supporting enterprises; New Exam-Link stimulates the optoelectronic communication industry cluster in Shuangliu, attracting a group of supporting enterprises;科研成果 (scientific research achievements) from universities continuously move towards industrialization, with increasing cases of professors and engineers starting businesses.
The outside world often discusses how coastal areas possess more mature industrial chains and capital environments, but Chengdu presents another model: tech enterprises do not necessarily have to flock to Beijing, Shanghai, or Shenzhen. As long as there is talent and industrial patience, inland cities can also incubate细分龙头 (niche leaders) that break foreign monopolies.
This is the best era for hard tech.
This article is from the WeChat public account "投资界" (ID: pedaily2012), author: Yang Jiyun
