--- title: "CanSemi, a loss-making Chinese foundry, more than tripled on its Shenzhen debut after raising $919 million" description: "CanSemi, a Guangzhou foundry with 6.5 billion yuan of accumulated losses, raised US$919 million in its Shenzhen listing; its shares more than tripled on debut. The wafers it plans to add land in the mature nodes SMIC earns from, and SMIC trades at 127 times earnings." publisher: "The Inference" section: "Silicon" published: 2026-10-13T17:02:41.069Z modified: 2026-10-13T17:02:41.069Z canonical: https://theinference.org/article/cansemi-a-loss-making-chinese-foundry-more-than-tripled-on-its-shenzhen-debut-after-raising-919-million language: en keywords: "Semiconductors, China, IPOs, Foundries, Memory" --- # CanSemi, a loss-making Chinese foundry, more than tripled on its Shenzhen debut after raising $919 million > CanSemi, a Guangzhou foundry with 6.5 billion yuan of accumulated losses, raised US$919 million in its Shenzhen listing; its shares more than tripled on debut. The wafers it plans to add land in the mature nodes SMIC earns from, and SMIC trades at 127 times earnings. A foundry that has never made a profit listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Tuesday after raising about 6.16 billion yuan (US$919 million), and its shares [more than tripled on debut](https://www.163.com/dy/article/L9450TT90531PW97.html) [1][3]. CanSemi Technology's listing shows how China finances chips under US sanctions: the rules were relaxed so a loss-maker could raise money to build capacity, and the market supplied it [1][3]. The Guangzhou company, founded in 2017, lost 6.5 billion yuan between 2023 and 2025 [1] and finished its first day valued at more than 100 billion yuan [3]. ## Beijing lists loss-makers so the capacity gets built An unprofitable foundry usually cannot keep raising capital. CanSemi is [the first money-losing wafer maker admitted to ChiNext](https://www.news.cn/fortune/20261013/64c1dfd934664a729bca96fbed2de436/c.html), Shenzhen's growth board, under China's registration-based listing system, which vets a filing's disclosures rather than its profits [3]. Beijing had already let the loss-making automotive foundry Xinlian Integrated list on Shanghai's STAR Market in 2023 [1]. The prospectus itself does not expect a return to profitability before 2029 at the earliest, and the offering was priced inside that window [1]. [Three built phases give the site a planned 80,000 wafers a month](https://biz.heraldcorp.com/article/10901311) of analog chips, power management ICs, image sensors and display drivers on 180-to-55-nanometer processes [1], and a fourth phase, under construction, lifts that to 120,000 [3][4]. The money was raised against that buildout schedule, so supply keeps arriving even when margins fall. ## The new wafers land in SMIC's revenue pool The 40,000 added wafers a month land in mature processes, where US equipment controls have pushed China to concentrate its buildout [1]. SMIC, China's largest foundry, [last guided revenue up 2 to 4 percent sequentially](https://www.ad-hoc-news.de/boerse/news/corporate-news/goldman-sachs-raises-target-for-smic-stock-to-hkd-135/70312328) on a 26-to-28 percent gross margin, after running at 93.7 percent utilization in the second quarter [5]. [Goldman Sachs](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/goldman-sachs) kept its Buy rating on Tuesday, citing AI demand for analog and logic chips, capacity expansion and domestic sourcing among its drivers [5]; the last two are what CanSemi's listing adds. Beijing fills SMIC's order book and its competitor list with the same hand. The market pays richly for that story. CanSemi itself was [priced at about 13 times last year's sales](https://news.futunn.com/hk/post/1000030563/cny-12-01-per-share-cansemi-semiconductor-sets-its-ipo) [2]. SMIC trades at 127.1 times earnings, and Hua Hong Semiconductor, the other mainland foundry, at 197.8 [6]. United Microelectronics, the Taiwan foundry in the same mature-node business, trades at 21.9 [6]. *Chart: **Mainland foundries carry earnings multiples far above Taiwan's UMC** Bar chart of price-to-earnings ratios: Hua Hong Semiconductor at 197.8x, SMIC at 127.1x, UMC at 21.9x.* *Price-to-earnings ratios from October 12, 2026, market quotes; SMIC and Hua Hong quoted in Hong Kong dollars, UMC in New Taiwan dollars. [6]* ## Korea repriced a Chinese capacity claim in a day On Saturday, CXMT, a state-backed memory maker in Hefei that listed in Shanghai in July, [said it would ship a next-generation DRAM design](https://startupfortune.com/chinas-cxmt-claims-dram-breakthrough-sends-samsung-and-sk-hynix-tumbling/) before the end of the year [1][7][8]. The design, called 4F², is meant to shrink the area each memory cell needs by about a third, and Samsung is not expected to begin mass production of the same architecture until around 2028 [1]. By Tuesday, Samsung had fallen 7.7 percent and SK Hynix 8.8 percent, and the Kospi, South Korea's benchmark index, was [down more than 7 percent](https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/south-korea-kospi-index-sinks-semiconductor-share-sell-ai-boom-worries-rcna603143) [9]. The Associated Press read the fall as unease over the AI boom itself, sharpened by reports of CXMT's advance [9]. No product had shipped; the claim alone moved two of the world's three biggest memory makers [7][9]. *Chart: **A memory claim, not a shipped product, knocked Korean chip shares down by more than 7 percent** Bar chart of one-day falls: Samsung 7.7 percent, SK Hynix 8.8 percent, Kospi more than 7 percent.* *Percentage falls in South Korean memory shares and the Kospi index by Tuesday, after CXMT's 4F² DRAM claim on Saturday. The Kospi fell by more than 7 percent. Sources: NBC News (Associated Press), October 13, 2026. [9]* ## The margin question is left to demand The demand behind the buildout is real. Memory has climbed to near 30 percent of capital spending by the hyperscalers, the big cloud-computing operators [7], and AI demand is pulling on the analog and logic chips made on these same nodes [5]. Cheap mature-node capacity works like a subsidy to the companies building on top of it, and the competition lands among the fabs, whose margins absorb each new entrant. The supply side is settled by policy. Demand is the open question, and it shows up first in SMIC's fab utilization, then in its next margin guide. The multiples on the mainland foundries are a bet that demand absorbs all of it, and this week showed how fast that bet gets repriced. ## Takeaway Beijing's listing rules let loss-makers raise money to build wafer capacity, and the market pays triple-digit multiples for the story; whether demand absorbs the new supply is the one thing the IPO did not settle. ## Sources 1. [The Korea Herald, "China lets loss-making foundry list, a show of confidence in legacy chips despite US sanctions", 13 October 2026](https://biz.heraldcorp.com/article/10901311) 2. [Cailianshe via Futu News, "CanSemi sets ChiNext IPO price at 12.01 yuan per share", 22 September 2026](https://news.futunn.com/hk/post/1000030563/cny-12-01-per-share-cansemi-semiconductor-sets-its-ipo) 3. [EETOP via NetEase, "Guangzhou's first chip lists, shares surge 275%, market value breaks 100 billion yuan", 13 October 2026](https://www.163.com/dy/article/L9450TT90531PW97.html) 4. [Xinhua, "'Guangzhou's first chip' CanSemi Technology lists on Shenzhen's ChiNext board", 13 October 2026](https://www.news.cn/fortune/20261013/64c1dfd934664a729bca96fbed2de436/c.html) 5. [ad-hoc-news.de, "Goldman Sachs raises target for SMIC stock to HKD 135", 13 October 2026](https://www.ad-hoc-news.de/boerse/news/corporate-news/goldman-sachs-raises-target-for-smic-stock-to-hkd-135/70312328) 6. [ad-hoc-news.de, "SMIC stock was HKD 56.20 with a 127.1 P/E on October 12, 2026", 12 October 2026](https://www.ad-hoc-news.de/boerse/news/corporate-news/smic-stock-was-hkd-56-20-with-a-127-1-p-e-on-october-12-2026/70301407) 7. [Startup Fortune, "China's CXMT Claims DRAM Breakthrough, Sends Samsung and SK Hynix Tumbling", 13 October 2026](https://startupfortune.com/chinas-cxmt-claims-dram-breakthrough-sends-samsung-and-sk-hynix-tumbling/) 8. [Wikipedia, "ChangXin Memory Technologies", accessed 13 October 2026](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChangXin_Memory_Technologies) 9. [NBC News (Associated Press), "South Korea's Kospi index sinks more than 7% on semiconductor share sell-off over AI boom worries", 13 October 2026](https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/south-korea-kospi-index-sinks-semiconductor-share-sell-ai-boom-worries-rcna603143) --- CanSemi, a loss-making Chinese foundry, more than tripled on its Shenzhen debut after raising $919 million — The Inference. Canonical: https://theinference.org/article/cansemi-a-loss-making-chinese-foundry-more-than-tripled-on-its-shenzhen-debut-after-raising-919-million