Changxing's Opening: Country Garden's Blockbuster $50 Billion Sale and a Generational Turnover

Original Title: "Changxin IPO: Country Garden Sold 50 Billion, and the Turnover of an Era"
Original Author: Dongcha Beating

At 9:30 am on July 27, 2026, Changxin Technology debuted on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board.

The IPO price was 8.66 yuan, the opening price was 49.50 yuan, with a 471.59% increase. Based on the post-IPO 668.81 billion shares, the total market value was 31.1 trillion yuan, surpassing Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, becoming the company with the highest market value in A-shares. At noon that day, the stock price reached 54.65 yuan, with the total market value briefly approaching 36.6 trillion yuan; the closing transaction was 141.187 billion yuan, breaking the record for the single-day trading volume of a single A-share stock.

Reportedly, there were 9.4288 million households participating in online subscriptions, with a 0.4714% allotment rate. With 500 shares per allotment, selling at the opening could earn 20,000 yuan. Changxin raised 57.919 billion yuan in the initial public offering, the largest IPO on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board to date.

After the bell ringing, people quickly calculated the net worth of the existing shareholders. How much is the holding of the Hefei State-owned Assets, how much is Alibaba's, and how much is the employee stock ownership platform worth.

But one name was missing from the list, Country Garden.

In 2021, it put out 2 billion yuan to buy about 2.24% of Changxin, which was later diluted through several rounds of capital increases to 1.56%. In December 2024, Country Garden sold all of these shares to Hefei State-owned Assets for 20 billion yuan. By the day Changxin went public, the shares once held by Country Garden were worth approximately 50 billion yuan.

Five years ago, it made a very difficult judgment. Nineteen months ago, it had to sell off this judgment.

Country Garden saw the industry clearly, but miscalculated how long it could wait.

Why Would Someone Selling Houses Research Hard Technology

Country Garden Venture Capital was established in 2019.

A year before its establishment, Country Garden proposed to transform into a "comprehensive high-tech enterprise." At that time, it was still one of the most cash-rich private enterprises in China. Its real estate business could provide a large amount of proprietary funds, and the group's brand could help this new investment institution access more projects than smaller institutions. At that time, it was not short of money, but it lacked a path other than real estate.

Country Garden's first exit from a hard technology investment was a rocket.

In 2019, the team spent nearly half a year interviewing domestic commercial aerospace companies to understand the industry's bottlenecks. Remote sensing, communication, and navigation all have satellite launch demands, with the bottleneck being in launch capacity. In the end, they chose Blue Arrow Aerospace, which was positioning itself as a medium to large liquid rocket at the time, and in December, they exclusively invested ¥500 million in Series C. Later, they led two consecutive rounds, with Blue Arrow's valuation rising from about ¥3 billion to over ¥10 billion.

This incident illustrates how Country Garden learns about investments.

It brought the house-building method into venture capital. Real estate development is already a business highly dependent on the supply chain, and Country Garden is most familiar with how to break down a very long chain and find the most critical nodes.

In investments, this method has two names. The core company on the industry chain is called the "Chain Master," and the bottleneck is called the "Chain Blocker." Before entering a new industry, the team must conduct a complete industry study. Without industry research, the project should not proceed to investment decision. The first semiconductor investment was in SMIC, which belongs to a "Chain Master" company; when moving towards manufacturing, Changxin is the kind of unavoidable "Chain Blocker" company.

Country Garden's fund allocation is also unique. Most RMB funds usually have a lifespan, and they must exit after seven or ten years. Country Garden's venture capital mainly uses the group's own funds. The managing partner, Niu Ruolei, then referred to it as "perpetual capital," theoretically without a time limit. It adopts a dumbbell strategy, investing in very early-stage technology projects on one end and nearly pre-IPO super unicorns with over ¥1 billion in a single investment on the other end, rarely participating in the highly competitive growth stage in between.

By early 2022, Country Garden's venture capital had independently completed over 90 investments, producing 26 unicorns and 10 listed companies; 52% of the investment amount was placed in advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, and hard technology fields such as carbon neutrality. The list includes Changxin, Blue Arrow, SMIC, Birun Technology, BYD Semiconductor, Shenghe Microelectronics, Honeycomb Energy, and ZM Discovery.

Why Invest ¥20 Billion in Changxin

The DRAM produced by Changxin is the memory used in computers, phones, and servers. While the item may look small, it requires a huge factory behind it.

A wafer fab must constantly purchase equipment, modify processes, hire engineers, and endure sharp price fluctuations. By the end of 2024, Changxin had accumulated losses of about ¥38.52 billion. Before going public, it already had three 12-inch wafer fabs and nearly 20,000 employees, including over 6,000 R&D personnel.

By 2025, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron together still hold more than 90% of the global DRAM market. The semiconductor industry has many tracks that can be started by a smart small team, but DRAM cannot. Design capabilities, manufacturing processes, yields, equipment, and funding are all necessary to achieve scale.

ChangXin was established in 2016. On September 20, 2019, it announced the launch of its self-built project, with the debut of 8Gb DDR4, proving that a mainland Chinese company has finally crossed the threshold of DRAM scale manufacturing.

So when Country Garden entered the scene in 2021, ChangXin had already reduced its early-stage technical risks, with the most expensive aspects of expansion, iteration, and market competition still ahead. This position happened to fall right at the end of Country Garden's "dumbbell" scale investment.

On July 5, 2021, Country Garden Venture Capital in Haikou and other shareholders signed a Series B funding agreement with ChangXin. The unified price for Series B was RMB 2.219 per RMB of registered capital, with an initial financing cap of RMB 26 billion. Country Garden contributed RMB 2 billion and subscribed to approximately RMB 9.013 billion of registered capital, holding a post-investment stake of 2.24%.

In the same round, there were also investors such as the National Large Fund Phase II, Anhui Provincial Investment, National Reform Fund, CMBI, Xiaomi, Midea, and other institutions and enterprises. In December of the same year, the financing cap was increased to RMB 36 billion.

From Spreadtrum's chip design, to ChangXin's wafer manufacturing, and then to Primax Electronics' packaging, Country Garden Venture Capital filled in the gaps of the semiconductor supply chain segment by segment. Investing in ChangXin was because they recognized that manufacturing is a crucial "link obstruction" in the Chinese semiconductor industry.

China is a major global DRAM demand market, and at that time, mainland China's large-scale supply was almost starting from scratch. As long as ChangXin survived, its expansion alone could quickly make it grow.

This assessment was later proven to be quite accurate. By the fourth quarter of 2025, ChangXin's global market share by revenue had risen to 7.67%, making it number one in China and number four globally; in the first quarter of 2026, revenue reached 50.8 billion RMB, with a net profit attributable to the parent company of 24.762 billion RMB. It took them many years to turn "can manufacture" into "can sell," and they caught the wave of AI servers driving memory demand to new heights.

“Perpetual Capital” Suddenly Had a Term

2021 was the year of ChangXin's Series B financing and also the peak of China's real estate sales.

In that year, nationwide sales of commercial housing reached 1.794 billion square meters, with sales of 18.19 trillion RMB. By 2025, the sales of newly built commercial housing had dropped to only 881 million square meters, almost halved in four years. By the end of 2021, the national population was 1.4126 billion, and the following year saw negative growth.

Amid the ebb tide, Country Garden is taking the lead. In 2021, 68% of its sales came from third- and fourth-tier cities. These cities once provided Country Garden with the broadest market and made it more difficult for the company to turn around when demand contracted.

At its peak, Country Garden's equity sales amounted to 558 billion yuan, with receipts of 502.2 billion yuan and cash available for use of 181.3 billion yuan. Three years later, equity sales had dropped to 47.2 billion yuan, with a net loss attributable to equity holders of 32.8 billion yuan and total borrowings of 253.5 billion yuan. Total cash at the end of the year was 29.9 billion yuan, of which 23.5 billion yuan was restricted, with only 6.362 billion yuan truly classified as cash and cash equivalents.

The 20 billion yuan on Country Garden's books in 2021 is an industrial investment that can wait ten years. By 2024, it will be equivalent to nearly one-third of year-end free cash.

The prepayments received at the sales offices do not truly belong to the developer. Behind every prepayment is a set of undelivered houses that will eventually turn the money into reinforced steel, concrete, elevators, and keys.

From 2022 to November 2025, Country Garden is expected to deliver approximately 1.8 million housing units. In order to hand over these houses, the company has been selling equity, hotels, bulk assets, and even official vehicles since 2022, with total proceeds exceeding 65 billion yuan. The 20 billion yuan from Changxin is just a part of it.

On May 31, 2024, Bloomberg reported that Country Garden Venture Capital is seeking buyers for its stake in Changxin, with an asking price of around 2 billion yuan. The transaction was still under review at the time and may not necessarily be completed. Country Garden subsequently responded that the group is evaluating its asset portfolio and potential disposal opportunities to optimize its asset-liability structure.

In June, Changxin completed a new round of financing, with 12 investors subscribing to 10.8 billion yuan at 2.61 yuan per share. At this price, the value of Country Garden's stake has exceeded 2.3 billion yuan.

On December 27, the seller Mingfang Biwu No. 5, the buyer Hefei Jianchang, and Changxin Technology signed a share transfer agreement, with the final price still at 2 billion yuan, approximately 2.22 yuan per share. Hefei Jianchang, directly held by Hefei Urban Construction Investment Holding Group, holds 87.45%, and the ultimate beneficiary is Hefei State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. Taking over Country Garden's stake is the state capital of the city where Changxin is located.

This is no longer a situation where a calm investment institution chooses the best exit window. Both the buyer and the seller know that the seller needs cash, and the only dignity that Country Garden can maintain in the end is to recover the principal in full.

The payment arrangement of the agreement also reflects this sense of urgency. Changxin must provide the stamped share register to the new shareholder on the tenth working day, and Hefei Jianchang will make a one-time full payment upon receipt of the register and payment notice. Hefei Jianchang also provides joint guarantees for 99.985% of the price, with a maximum guarantee of 1.9997 billion yuan. If the transaction cannot be completed within 180 days, the party complying with the agreement may terminate the agreement. Other existing shareholders will waive their preemptive rights either explicitly or implicitly.

Evergrande's announcement specified that the intended use of this ¥2 billion was for general working capital, mainly for project construction such as property delivery. Changxin's equity has transformed into on-site construction funds.

From the equity changes disclosed in Changxin's IPO prospectus, Evergrande was the only early external investor who completely sold off their holdings without waiting for the IPO. Some people completed small-scale transfers, while others moved their shares to related platforms, but Evergrande was the only one to truly exit their position.

Tale of Twenty-Four Cities

In late 1958, a large number of cadres, workers, and equipment from Shenyang's Factory 111 moved to the southwest. Some sold their houses and furniture, took their families, and traveled by train and ship, covering thousands of kilometers to Chengdu. In January 1959, Factory 420 was officially established. It later became a crucial aerospace engine factory in the southwest, with factory buildings, dormitories, schools, and cafeterias connected, and the lives of generations revolving around the machinery.

Half a century later, Chengdu's eastern suburbs underwent industrial layout adjustments. The original site of Factory 420 was handed over to real estate development, transforming the former factory area into the residential complex "Twenty-Four Cities."

Upon learning that a state-owned factory with tens of thousands of employees was to be transformed into residential housing within a year, Jia Zhangke felt that "there was too much to be said about this matter" and thus directed the film "Tale of Twenty-Four Cities." In the movie, people sit in front of the old factory building, discussing the production line, collective dormitories, and the disappeared way of life.

Evergrande was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on April 20, 2007. The IPO price was HK$5.38, and the closing price on the first day of trading was HK$7.27. The public offering was oversubscribed by 255.7 times, with approximately HK$330 billion frozen. Yang Huiyan, who was not yet thirty years old, held 58.19% of the shares, and real estate created a new Chinese richest person that morning.

Factory 420 transformed into Twenty-Four Cities, and Evergrande became a new star in the capital market, both transpiring in the same era. At that time, there was a strong sense of direction in the city, where the old factory represented the past, and commercial housing represented the future; the land under the production line was vacated and built into residential buildings, indicating a revaluation of its worth.

Evergrande grew up in this direction. It connected land, population mobility, and pre-sale funds into a massive machine, expanding from Shunde to over two hundred cities. By 2019, it attempted to channel the private capital accumulated in real estate into rockets, chips, and new energy.

The money earned from the old industry should have naturally been used to support immature new industries. It's just that the old cycle faded too quickly, while the new cycle arrived too slowly.

On July 27, 2026, the bell rang again. This time, a wafer manufacturer took the stage.

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