Shanghai Brothers aggressively secure orders, leading chip giant earning effortlessly with 110 billion yuan

Ask AI · How does the ChipRight chip design platform model attract a surge in AI orders?

Reporter | He Jipai Editor | Tan Lu Yan Ziwai

Shanghai’s leading chip company takes steps toward a Hong Kong IPO.

On April 1st, ChipRight Corporation officially submitted its Hong Kong IPO prospectus. Its founder is Dai Weimin. He and Dai Weijin, Dai Weili, are well-known in the industry; the three siblings founded six chip companies successively.

Currently, Dai Weimin serves as Chairman and CEO of ChipRight, while his younger brother Dai Weijin is the Chief Strategy Officer and General Manager of the IP Business Division.

With the combined efforts of the elder and second brothers, orders are pouring in. By the end of 2025, ChipRight’s backlog is about 5.1 billion yuan, a new high.

Among these orders, over 80% can be converted into revenue within a year.

The Dai brothers are busy digesting orders, seeking acquisition opportunities, and diving into the AI boom to strike gold, maintaining a neutral stance over the years, navigating flexibly.

Order Surge

Dai Weimin, 70 years old, has been in the chip industry for most of his life and is still active on the front lines.

“This kind of significant increase in orders is something ChipRight has never experienced before,” he lamented last year.

In the period from October to December 2025 alone, ChipRight’s new signed order amount exceeded 2.7 billion yuan, roughly half of the total annual order volume, with an upward curve becoming steeper.

Over 70% of orders are linked to AI computing power. Looking closer, the majority of orders are in data processing, mainly from cloud-side AI ASICs and IP. No wonder, Dr. Dai now often emphasizes a new label when mentioning ChipRight: “AI ASIC leader.”

ChipRight is riding the wave, and as of the close on April 3rd, its market capitalization surpassed 110 billion yuan.

The outlook for performance is optimistic, thanks to Dai Weimin choosing a unique path. He does not manufacture or sell chips but focuses on design and IP licensing.

Dai Weimin often uses “building houses” as a metaphor for chip design.

Other companies handle design, procurement, and construction all by themselves. ChipRight breaks down these tasks into modules, capable of doing just the living room or kitchen, or acting as a general contractor, providing one-stop chip customization and semiconductor IP licensing, forming its exclusive “Chip Design Platform as a Service.”

The benefit of this approach is that ChipRight remains purely an乙方 (service provider), neutral in role, able to maintain good relationships with all wafer fabs.

The company also bears no inventory risk and has no boundaries in application fields. Even if some markets fluctuate cyclically, its business remains flexible and adaptable, always finding a way to shine “in the east or west.”

This model also allows flexible responses to customer base changes.

“System integrators, internet companies, cloud service providers, and automakers are increasingly designing their own branded chips due to cost, control over core technology, and supply chain management,” Dai Weimin said.

He noted that these companies generally lack chip design capabilities, resources, and experience, and tend to seek cooperation with service providers.

By 2025, these four customer groups will contribute 40% of revenue, with a clear trend of “upward movement” in their customer base.

Expanding to the End Side

Dai Weimin’s neutral strategy allows ChipRight to diversify income streams while observing the overall landscape and preemptively positioning for new trends.

He believes that opportunities for companies are not in total surpassing but in deepening niche markets to gain differentiated competitive advantages. Under his leadership, ChipRight is dedicated to R&D in key application areas.

End-side AI is one of his strategic focuses.

As early as four years ago, ChipRight developed AR glasses chips for internet companies. At that time, brokerages predicted that AR glasses would explode as early as 2026, but Dai Weimin believed the breakout would happen in 2025, and it did.

He predicts, “Real profit-making AI is on the end side,” and vividly compares the AIGC ecosystem to a big tree: “The roots are computing power, the trunk is the training card for general large models, the branches are the fine-tuning cards for domain-specific large models, and the leaves are the inference cards for application-facing end-side.”

Previously, the industry focused on “the trunk,” but the true massive market value lies in the “branches and leaves.”

Custom AI ASICs are the primary choice for end-side AI chips. Dai Weimin aims to expand the end-side AI market, viewing autonomous driving and smart glasses as key application scenarios.

ChipRight has provided a customized autonomous driving chip based on 5nm automotive-grade process for a certain new energy vehicle manufacturer and is advancing the development of a Chiplet platform for smart mobility.

In AI/AR glasses, it possesses a high-performance, ultra-low power chip design platform capable of creating products adaptable to different power modes.

Management revealed that ChipRight provides “one-stop” AR glasses chip customization services for a “well-known international internet company,” and is collaborating with several leading global AI/AR/VR clients.

To secure orders from all directions, ChipRight must stay at the forefront of technology. How are its R&D staff compensated?

Financial reports show that by the end of 2025, 90% of the company’s R&D personnel hold advanced degrees, with an average annual salary of 670k yuan; last year, the turnover rate among employees in mainland China was only 2.8%.

Mergers and Acquisitions Support

While working diligently, Dai Weimin also keeps an eye on opportunities, thinking about how to “sow fish fry” earlier and more accurately than others.

In the entire industry chain, ChipRight, as a chip design company, naturally has bridging attributes. Plus, Dai Weimin actively promotes platformization and ecosystem development, making M&A a good fit.

In early January, ChipRight announced the completion of its investment and capital increase in Tiansui Chipyuan, gaining control of Zhudian Semiconductor.

The target is a market leader in a niche segment, producing 3LCD projector main control chips (SOC) with over 80% market share, serving Xiaomi, Honor, and other mainstream mobile phone brands.

The two companies’ businesses are highly synergistic, forming a “pre-processing + post-processing” complete image processing chain. After the merger, ChipRight’s competitiveness in end-side and cloud-side AI ASIC markets is enhanced, enabling one-stop solutions for mobile phone clients.

Dai Weimin skillfully secured this acquisition.

In the 940 million yuan capital increase led by ChipRight, only 350 million yuan was paid out of pocket, with the rest raised through multiple co-investors.

The deal moved swiftly—less than three months from internal approval to completion.

At the same time, Dai Weimin halted another acquisition.

In December 2025, ChipRight announced the termination of its acquisition of Xinlai Zhihong, citing “the core demands of the target company’s management and the transaction counterparty diverge from market conditions, policy requirements, and the interests of the company and all shareholders.”

In subsequent briefings, the management led by Dai Weimin clarified, “Terminating the acquisition does not mean halting RISC-V technology investment.”

He emphasized that, as a shareholder of Xinlai Zhihong, ChipRight will maintain and deepen cooperation, continuing to strengthen its RISC-V field layout.

In terms of IP licensing revenue, ChipRight currently ranks sixth globally, and with its extensive IP portfolio, it could rank among the top two worldwide. Dai Weimin is ambitious: “We hope to take another step up, build an ecosystem, and serve the entire industry.”

At 70, he still hasn’t had enough wins.

Image source: ChipRight Corporation, unless otherwise noted