Korean media reported that CXMT employees who received equity incentives ahead of the company’s listing could end up holding shares worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per person.

This is because CXMT granted large-scale equity awards in 2021 and 2023 to around 7,000 core employees, including engineers. CXMT founder and chairman Zhu Yiming also plans to distribute 50% of the shares he will receive as a listing-related performance bonus to employees, which is estimated to amount to around RMB 1 million, or $150,000, per employee.
Among the executives set to receive significant rewards are Chinese executives who previously worked at Samsung Electronics. One notable example is director Wang Dan, who worked at Samsung Electronics from 2010 to 2018 before joining CXMT in 2019. He and his spouse together hold around 7 million shares, which would be worth RMB 200 million, or about $30 million, at the time of listing.
Industry sources expect that Korean engineers who moved to CXMT after receiving stock options will also make substantial gains from CXMT’s listing. A former Samsung Electronics researcher who was sentenced to seven years in prison this March on charges of leaking technology to CXMT had also been offered stock options.