Five years ago, she went all in on Canaan Inc.

Original Title: "Five Years Ago, She Heavily Invested in Changxin"

A milestone scene.

On the evening of July 23, Changxin Technology (688825.SH) announced that the company will debut on the STAR Market on July 27. The IPO price this time is set at ¥8.66 per share, with a planned fundraising amount of around ¥58 billion—meaning that the largest IPO in the history of the STAR Market is about to take place.

The public may not be aware that in this narrative of China's storage industry rise, the figure of a female investor appeared—Dr. Polly Peng, Managing Partner of Huadeng Gaoke. Five years ago, it was she who, under pressure, made the largest investment of nearly ¥900 million, contra-investing heavily in Changxin Technology.

Not long ago, the investment community met Dr. Peng who was on a business trip in Beijing. Rarely seen in the public eye, she recounted for the first time those past events related to Changxin.

Five Years Ago, One Day, Four Cities

When talking about Changxin, Dr. Peng first remembered a day in four cities five years ago.

It was the end of August 2021, when Huadeng was holding an internal monthly meeting by the West Lake in Hangzhou. The team was unable to reach a consensus on the investment topic regarding Changxin. The meeting that day lasted until very late, and the Changxin project team had been discussing for a long time— the DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) track was too difficult, the risk was too high, and the cycle was too long. Most institutions had avoided it, and there were also internal disagreements within Huadeng.

The team's internal concerns were very specific: it was a time when the industry and capital cycle was declining, investment market confidence was low during the epidemic, and the STAR Market frenzy was cooling off.

There was a long silence in the meeting room. It wasn't until one of the partners spoke, in a calm tone, stating a fact that did not need to be argued: "This project must be invested in. Although it's extremely difficult, I personally will invest ¥15 million because this team is too excellent."

There was no applause, only silence. Dr. Peng later explained that when the industry is so difficult that financial models cannot quantify it, the judgment of the founder is the most significant model. "It's precisely because we have seen too many storage projects fail,

that we know in this track, people are more important than numbers."

The meeting adjourned deep into the night. The next morning, as the first light of day broke, she hurried to catch the earliest flight.

That day, Dr. Peng traveled to four cities. First, in the early morning, she flew to Beijing, accompanying the Changxin team for institutional roadshows.

On the plane, she had a thick datasheet in front of her.

After the roadshow, she rushed to Beijing Daxing International Airport and took a one-hour flight to Hefei. Upon arriving in Hefei in the afternoon, she went directly to the front-line workshop of Changxin Factory. The workshop was brightly lit, with the air maintained at a constant temperature, carrying a slight chill. Changxin's founder, Zhu Yiming, dressed in a dust-free suit, pointed to the equipment in the clean room through the glass as he walked and explained the technical progress. She followed behind, listening and thinking about a practical question: how much money does this production line really need to sustain?

In the evening, she had boxed meals in the factory meeting room, with braised pork, a few side dishes. While eating, everyone discussed topics such as how to secure production capacity, the financing route to take, and how to make progress step by step along this path.

Late at night, Dr. Peng caught the last high-speed train back to Shanghai, arriving home in the early morning. In the Notes app on her phone, she wrote a line: "Hangzhou → Beijing → Hefei → Shanghai. Worth it."

During the subsequent investment decision meeting, the Walden team once again extensively discussed Changxin. Little did the outside world know that, at that time, they were under much greater pressure than imagined. As a VC firm, Walden focused more on early-stage investments, with the usual investment amount being several tens of millions of RMB, while Changxin needed close to the size of a whole fund.

In response, Dr. Peng did not dwell too much on financial models but instead emphasized repeatedly: "Someone has to do this thing eventually. Everyone is waiting, so who will take the initiative?" In the end, she went against the consensus and decided to invest nearly 900 million RMB in Changxin.

Thus, this deal facilitated the largest investment ever made by Walden China.

Such a scale also meant that the fundraising difficulty was not to be underestimated. To this end, Dr. Peng and her team painstakingly held lengthy discussions with each LP, just to convey a consensus — that investing in Changxin is to support the country and the development of the domestic semiconductor industry. It was the long-term companionship and steadfast trust of the LPs behind them that gave Walden the confidence to take a heavy position.

Ten Years Ago, From Zhaoyi Innovation to Changxin Technology

In 2016, Changxin was established in Hefei. Walden did not miss a single meeting — with the main driver of the project being Hefei Construction Investment, Walden's long-term strategic partner.

But this relationship can be traced back even further.

In 2005, Zhu Yiming returned to China to establish Zhaoyi Innovation, with Walden standing behind him. After the company went public in 2016, he did not stop but turned to more challenging tasks, attempting to expand into the DRAM market, thus giving rise to the story of Changxin Technology.

As an investor who has been deeply involved in the semiconductor industry for many years, Dr. Peng understands the challenges involved: high barriers, significant investments, and long cycles. The characteristics of the semiconductor industry are vividly demonstrated in the DRAM race.

“At that time, domestic DRAM was still not widely trusted. IBM's fab had shut down, and even with the full support of Germany and Japan, they couldn't establish a strong presence in the storage industry. Therefore, almost all mainstream institutions in the market at that time steered clear,” Dr. Peng vividly recalled.

After the ZTE incident in 2018, she became increasingly certain of one thing: China's semiconductor industry needed its own supply chain. What was even more crucial was that this task was led by Zhu Yiming. "A company that occupies such a critical position in the industry cannot be overlooked."

Dr. Peng had known Zhu Yiming for a long time and knew that he was not the type of person to "try and retract if it doesn't work out." She witnessed his dedication: "In the past, after some companies went public, they either ventured into real estate or crossed into finance, but Zhu Yiming continued to delve deep into the storage track, which made us take notice."

What impressed the Huadan team the most was Zhu Yiming's true big dream. He never set limits for himself or the company, daring not only to dream but also to act. In other words, he was an entrepreneur who was not afraid of taking on big challenges.

Chinese semiconductors do not lack funds; what they lack is people willing to spend a decade building an industry chain. In Dr. Peng's view, the essence of investment is precisely to connect with an entrepreneur's dream, and the entrepreneur's focus and perseverance are where her determination lies.

Changxin Technology also lived up to expectations, completing in a few years the journey that took foreign giants more than a decade or even several decades. As they were about to witness the birth of this epic IPO, the Huadan team was filled with emotion. The memory of going against the trend and heavily investing five years ago was still vivid, and Dr. Peng's feelings were even more profound. Almost all of Huadan's invested companies are long-term projects, meaning that the investment team must sit on this cold bench for 10 or even 15 years.

However, she always emphasized to the team that hard work would never be in vain. "There are very few institutions that originated from Silicon Valley and are still active in hard technology investments. Only Huadan has been holding on. Because we believe that persistence will eventually lead to success."

Those Who Persist Will Eventually Reap the Rewards of Time

This is like a microcosm of Dr. Peng's investment career.

Looking back to when she first joined Huadan in 2015, the team gave her the impression of being "engineer investors"—lacking the elite style of Wall Street, but their precise judgment of the changes in China's semiconductor industry impressed her.

After joining Huadan, her first investment was in brain-computer interfaces—a field that was not even considered mainstream at the time. She invested $3 million in Neuralink when the company had not yet emerged from the lab. What moved her was the founder of Neuralink,

Han Bicheng's original intention—"Technology for Good."

Later, she successively invested in Yitang Stock, SinMicro Semiconductor, Guanxin Semiconductor... As Longxin is about to debut on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board, this female partner who made the largest single investment in Huadeng China's history has used one hardcore investment after another to prove herself.

Having walked together with Huadeng for ten years, Dr. Peng witnessed with her own eyes how these super projects went from "no one believed" to "everyone knows." She slowly realized one thing — Huadeng is not just investing, but standing by the side of the enterprise when it needs a partner the most. This is actually a mutual commitment. It is this resonance with the enterprise that is the core of Huadeng's ability to seize super projects without fail.

"I often emphasize within Huadeng — as long as the founder doesn't give up, we won't give up." She describes Huadeng as a "slow fund": when the market is hot, they do not follow the trend; during industry downturns, they insist on heavy positions against the trend; they do not chase short-term hype bubbles, but rather, persevere with the company through the cycle. This kind of determination is the most precious heritage Huadeng has passed down.

As the outside world can see, in the long list of shareholders behind Longxin, the presence of market-oriented VC/PE funds is rare, and Huadeng is one of the few who stayed with heavy positions. Looking back to the time when Longxin urgently needed help, the reason Dr. Peng and Huadeng did not hesitate was not because they were smarter than others, but because she knew that when the direction and the people were right, all that was left was to wait for time to validate.

"Perhaps the pessimists are right, but the optimists always reap the rewards." Just like that night five years ago, she firmly chose to be optimistic.

Over thirty years of venture capital in China, there have been many ups and downs. As the winding river of time flows forward, some people have joined the industry wholeheartedly, while others have quietly left. At the end of her interaction with the investment community, when asked, "After so many years of investing, what do you believe in the most?" Dr. Peng pondered for a moment and gave an answer: "Investing is believing in time."

She remembered a predecessor once said: "The essence of investment is simplicity. Firmly choose to walk with like-minded people, time is the best friend, and it will bring the best gifts." This sentence, she has remembered to this day.

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