Author: Jiu Lin
On October 9, at the HKEX. Wang Dongsheng took the stage to ring the bell once again.
This marks Wang Dongsheng's third IPO in his career, following BOE and Xi'an Yicai. This time, standing behind him is ESWIN Computing.
Just a year ago, Xi'an Yicai, a silicon material enterprise under ESWIN Group, was listed on the SSE STAR Market. From BOE to ESWIN Material, and then to ESWIN Computing, Wang Dongsheng has spent over three decades extending his business from semiconductor displays to upstream silicon materials and chip design. The continuously expanding industrial landscape has always revolved around two long-standing challenges in China's industry: screens and chips. For the former, Chinese companies have spent decades gradually establishing global leadership; for the latter, the industry is still seeking more answers. The breakthrough chosen by ESWIN Computing is RISC-V.
This IPO has a profound impact on the RISC-V field:
First, the industrialization process of RISC-V has reached a significant milestone. As the "first RISC-V stock," ESWIN Computing allows the capital market to evaluate the commercial value of this technological route through a company's products, customers, and revenue, also providing a reference for more RISC-V enterprises to enter the capital market.
Second, the listing of a platform-based enterprise has shown the industry a new path for expanding applications. ESWIN Computing has accumulated over 620 IP modules, with products covering human-machine interaction, multimedia processing, interconnection, and computing. It connects industry partners through the RISAA (RISC-V+AI) technology platform and the RDI (RISC-V Digital Infrastructure) synergy alliance. This enables more upstream and downstream enterprises in the RISC-V industry chain to reuse their technological accumulation in more scenarios, providing customers with more comprehensive solutions through software and hardware collaboration.
Third, RISC-V now has a commercialization benchmark that transitions from products to large-scale business. With over 150 integrated software and hardware products and a revenue of CNY 2.431 billion in 2025, the industry sees a specific path: starting from real needs, entering vertical scenarios, and applying accumulated technology and experience to expand into new markets.
01. Seven Years in the Making
In 2010, smartphones were putting computers into people's pockets. x86 supported the PC era, and Arm expanded with the mobile internet. Behind these two architectures lies an industrial order accumulated over years by chips, software, and developers.
At the University of California, Berkeley, a group of researchers designed an instruction set that could be freely used and extended for teaching and experimental needs, naming it RISC-V. The open rules provided more enterprises with the opportunity to design processors. As for how large an industry it could grow into, there was no answer at the time.
Across the ocean, Wang Dongsheng was still trekking in the display industry.
In 1993, he led a team to found BOE.
At that time, "lacking chips and screens" was an inescapable situation for China's electronics industry: complete machine manufacturing was continuously expanding, but the technology and supply of core components remained in the hands of overseas manufacturers. In 2003, BOE acquired the TFT-LCD business of Hyundai Display of South Korea for USD 380 million, obtaining relevant technologies, patents, and production lines, taking a crucial step into the liquid crystal display industry.
During Wang Dongsheng's more than two decades at the helm of BOE, Chinese semiconductor display enterprises experienced technological catch-up, massive investments, and price troughs, gradually gaining a foothold in the global market and eventually becoming leaders. However, the enhancement of competitiveness in semiconductor displays also made other shortcomings in the industry chain more conspicuous: while screens could be manufactured domestically, the vast majority of chips that drive and control the screens still needed to be procured externally.
In 2015, the RISC-V Foundation was established. In the same year, BOE, Beijing E-Town International Investment & Development, the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, and others established the Core Power Investment Fund to plan overseas acquisitions. After two years without success, the team shifted to independent incubation, which became the predecessor of ESWIN Group. By 2019, the two industrial processes intersected. That year, the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, launched the "Xiangshan" project, and domestic exploration of RISC-V began to advance towards high-performance computing.
Also that year, the 62-year-old Wang Dongsheng stepped down as Chairman of BOE, accepted an invitation to join ESWIN Group, and founded ESWIN Computing in September, choosing RISC-V+AI as the strategic direction.
Starting anew at 62 meant dedicating time once again to R&D, production lines, and the market. From display screens to chips, Wang Dongsheng has always chosen careers that require long-term investment and difficult accumulation. What these investments ultimately leave behind is the technology in factories, the experience of engineers, and the foundation for successors to move forward. The industrial confidence of a country is gradually accumulated in such years.
At that time, x86 and Arm already had mature products and software ecosystems, while RISC-V was still accumulating commercial applications. Choosing it meant that while enterprises gained greater design freedom, they also had to bear the costs of perfecting tools, adapting software, and convincing customers. Wang Dongsheng recalled, "Choosing the RISC-V direction at that time required courage."
Seven years of polishing have yielded results for ESWIN Computing. From 2023 to 2025, the company's operating revenue grew from CNY 1.752 billion to CNY 2.431 billion. Based on 2025 revenue, ESWIN Computing is China's largest domestic provider of human-machine interaction chip products for smart terminals, and simultaneously ranks third among domestic RISC-V main control chip product providers in China. As of March 31, 2026, the company has brought over 150 software and hardware collaborative products to the market, serving 220 customers globally.
02. RISC-V Commercialization: How Far Has It Come?
To understand why we say ESWIN Computing's listing has benchmark significance, we first need to understand the global development of RISC-V. Today's RISC-V market is comprehensively transitioning from early exploration to a stage of structural commercialization. The judgment that "RISC-V is an 'academic project' and is hard to disrupt the established landscape of Arm and x86" is now completely outdated.
We can look at three sets of data:
First, in terms of market share, global RISC-V SoC shipments reached approximately 6.9 billion units in 2025 and are expected to grow to about 36 billion units by 2031, with a compound annual growth rate as high as 31.7%. By then, RISC-V will account for more than one-third of the global SoC market. This is no longer just the product growth of a single company, but a structural migration of the entire CPU architecture ecosystem.
Second, in terms of growth potential, by 2030, the penetration rate of RISC-V in the global smart terminal chip product market will reach 15.7%, and in China, it will reach 26.7%. According to this forecast, more than a quarter of China's market share will be related to RISC-V.
Third, in terms of application deployment, by 2031, RISC-V chips will hold significant shares in six major markets: consumer electronics (39%), computers (33%), automotive (31%), data centers (28%), industrial (27%), and network communications (26%). RISC-V is accelerating its application deployment, entering a broader range of chip products and markets.
Behind the market growth, the business of RISC-V enterprises is becoming increasingly clear: some provide processor IP, some sell chips, and some further deliver boards and systems. After customers start procuring, the issues they focus on become more specific: whether the products are easy to use, whether the software is complete, whether supply can be stable, and whether the next-generation products can be launched on time.
Looking at products first, the commercialization of RISC-V has formed different divisions of labor. Companies like Andes Technology and Nuclei System Technology enter from processor IP, where customers purchase core licenses, add other functional modules, and develop their own chips. Espressif Systems, Bluetrum, and others directly integrate RISC-V into end-facing products. ESWIN Computing's product layout spans multiple segments. As of March 31, 2026, the company has accumulated over 620 IP modules and more than 20 serialized RISC-V cores, launching over 150 software and hardware collaborative products covering multiple fields such as human-machine interaction, multimedia processing, interconnection, and computing.
In terms of applications, a batch of RISC-V chips has become a common presence in terminal products. In the consumer electronics field, HONOR is one of ESWIN Computing's important customers. From HONOR 100, HONOR 400, to the HONOR 500 series, the cooperation between the two has continued for several generations of products. In the automotive field, the industry chain is establishing standards around real-time performance, safety isolation, and system integration, preparing for the large-scale deployment of more RISC-V chips in the automotive sector. Quintauris, involving enterprises such as Bosch, Infineon, NXP, and Qualcomm, launched the RT-Europa platform specification for automotive real-time processors in 2026. ESWIN Computing has already achieved mass production in some vehicle scenarios. Its EAM2011 automotive-grade MCU adopts a self-developed 32-bit RISC-V core and has been shipped stably, with applications including smart seats, display assemblies, and in-vehicle wireless charging. Among them, the smart seat solution delivers the chip together with tools and algorithms for human posture recognition and dynamic seat adjustment, and is currently applied in the Zunjie V800. For products facing higher safety requirements, ESWIN Computing's R520A core obtained the ASIL-D functional safety certification issued by TÜV Rheinland in Germany in March 2026.
In terms of ecosystem, RISC-V is making up for software, tools, and supporting services, allowing customers to integrate chips into products at lower development costs. Enterprises such as Google, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Red Hat, and Alibaba DAMO Academy participate in the RISE project to jointly improve RISC-V's toolchains, operating systems, and basic software. In August 2025, Debian 13 officially supported riscv64 for the first time, providing developers with software packages and maintenance support from mainstream Linux distributions. ESWIN Computing is also a strong contributor to the RISC-V ecosystem, having built the RISAA (RISC-V+AI) ecosystem technology platform, organizing basic software, development tools, and domain application support to serve chip, chipset, and board development. Focusing on industrial collaboration, ESWIN Computing also took the lead in establishing the RDI Synergy Alliance, which now has nearly a hundred members; it is also promoting the construction of ecosystem innovation centers in Beijing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an, and other places.
In terms of capital, valuations in the RISC-V track continue to rise. Internationally, SiFive announced the completion of a USD 400 million Series G funding round, reaching a valuation of USD 3.65 billion, with investors including Atreides Management, NVIDIA, and others. In the domestic primary market, enterprises such as Yixing Technology, SpacemiT, and Xinji Wuxian have frequently secured financing. In the secondary market, ESWIN Computing's listing on the HKEX has become a core benchmark, with the total investment consideration from Series A to Series D exceeding CNY 9 billion, with investors including IDG Capital, Legend Capital, Bohua Capital, and others.
Products, applications, ecosystem, and capital are indispensable capabilities for RISC-V to move towards large-scale commercialization. The accumulation formed by ESWIN Computing in these areas makes it a benchmark with comprehensive reference value. This listing also allows the industry to see greater development space for RISC-V enterprises. For China's chip industry, an increase in such enterprises means that independently developed achievements have more opportunities to reach the market.
03. The Agentic Era Arrives: Threefold Opportunities for RISC-V
What will be the next step for RISC-V? AI is bringing new opportunities. Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, once pointed out that the rapid growth of AI's demand for computing power provides new opportunities for the development of RISC-V.
In the past few years, large model training has driven investments in high-end GPUs and large computing clusters, but as AI evolves into Agentic AI, the CPU returns to center stage. AI shifts from chatting to working, and computing demands become dispersed accordingly. Complex tasks can be handed over to the cloud, while parts involving instant response, personal data, or device control remain at the terminal and edge. With its open-source, extensible, and customizable features, RISC-V has become a key option in the Agentic AI era, and the global RISC-V AI accelerator market size is expected to reach USD 222.3 billion by 2031.
Wang Dongsheng once explained that when planning the development route for ESWIN Computing, he found that other peers had already done Arm and x86 extremely well. "More importantly, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is here, and the AI era is here. We need to rethink the entire ICT technologies and systems such as computing, communications, and electronics. This is the era background for our choice to pursue RISC-V."
When entering the liquid crystal display industry back then, BOE faced an already established technological and market landscape. Today, AI brings a new round of computing demands, and the software and hardware ecosystem of RISC-V is still developing. Chinese enterprises have the opportunity to participate earlier, from developing products to contributing tools and participating in standards, bringing their technological accumulation into the global industrial division of labor.
With the arrival of the Agentic AI era, RISC-V has threefold opportunities. First, AI terminals need more low-power sensing and interaction chips. Mobile phones, wearable devices, and smart homes are beginning to process sound, image, and environmental information, requiring both timely response and power consumption control. Second, robots require multiple types of chips to work collaboratively. From visual recognition to motion control, computing power, real-time performance, and safety requirements vary, leaving space for dedicated chips. Third, the continuously growing inference demand requires more economical computing solutions. From edge devices to intelligent computing centers, customers are increasingly focusing on the cost per task, making the coordination between CPUs, AI accelerators, and software more important. These opportunities also correspond to ESWIN Computing's three growth curves: human-machine interaction chips firmly ranking at the top domestically, embodied intelligence chips and solutions taking initial shape, and forward-looking layout of edge computing and AI chips for intelligent computing centers completed.
The first growth curve is the upgrade and extension of human-machine interaction chips. Human-machine interaction products have enabled ESWIN Computing to enter the supply chain of terminal brands. As customers add AI functions, ESWIN Computing also has the opportunity to extend cooperation from the periphery of screens to more sensing and computing links.
The second growth curve is embodied intelligence chips and solutions. The development of the robotics industry will thus bring demand to multiple chip segments. Different parts have different requirements for computing power, real-time performance, and cost, also providing RISC-V enterprises with multiple entry points. ESWIN Computing has deployed lightweight AI SoCs, MCUs, image processing, communication, motor control, and other chips and solutions, with products widely applicable in fields such as robotics, smart hardware, and industrial automation.
The third growth curve is AI chips for edge and intelligent computing centers. Once AI applications are put into use, they will continuously consume computing power. Enterprises care about both model effectiveness and the cost of each invocation. Tasks involving instant response and local data can be processed at the edge; complex tasks rely on computing centers. Both ends require more efficient chips and systems. The prospectus discloses that ESWIN Computing's AI accelerator card combines four AI SoCs with software such as inference frameworks and model deployment tools, integrating AI SoCs with supporting hardware and software into system-level computing products.
04. After Ringing the Bell, RISC-V Moves Towards a Broader Market
In February 2026, in the 2026-2027 Budget, the Hong Kong Government specifically included RISC-V in the deployment related to "cultivating and expanding emerging industries," proposing that the Hong Kong Investment Management Co., Ltd. actively promote RISC-V technology R&D and industrial implementation through strategic investments and cooperation with leading enterprises.
In September 2026, in the "15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Electronic Information Manufacturing Industry" jointly issued by the MIIT and the NDRC, a clear statement appeared in the 9th key task: "Promote the R&D and industrialization of the fifth-generation reduced instruction set (RISC-V), and support the application of RISC-V chips in fields such as artificial intelligence and embedded systems."
Less than a month later, ESWIN Computing was listed on the HKEX. Policy support for industrialization and the company's years of R&D, product, and market accumulation converge at this time. After seven years of development, ESWIN Computing already has a product portfolio, mass production customers, software platforms, and industry partners, and has also obtained capital support for continued R&D investment. These capabilities together form the foundation of its role as a commercialization benchmark.
Wang Dongsheng once said, "The needs of the country are the direction and opportunity for us industrialists. In the technology industry, I have always adhered to a principle: either don't do it, or if we do it, we must be number one in the world." This sentence runs through his choice to move from screens to chips.
In the past, China could manufacture a large number of complete electronic machines, but was subject to the control of others in key links such as screens and chips. The growth of enterprises like BOE has enabled China's semiconductor display industry to gradually take the initiative in technology, capacity, and supply. It has shown people that Chinese enterprises can master core technologies through long-term investment and win their own position in global competition. Today, what ESWIN Computing and ESWIN Material are investing in is the foundation that the integrated circuit industry also needs to cultivate patiently.
Looking back from the node of listing on the HKEX, the expectations carried by ESWIN Computing and the pressure it bears are equally huge. New products, new orders, and subsequent financial reports will allow the industry to see more clearly how an open architecture supports the growth of an enterprise, and how it enters more markets through the growth of the enterprise.
From screens to chips, the 69-year-old Wang Dongsheng is still participating in the next leg of China's electronics industry. After the bell-ringing at the HKEX, what awaits ESWIN Computing is a broader market, as well as a journey that still requires patience. On this path, there are more and more Chinese enterprises devoted to the chip business, as well as enterprises and developers around the world jointly building RISC-V. Giving China's electronics industry more independent confidence is the distant goal that this nearly 70-year-old industrialist is still striving towards.