The storage chip market is booming, and this test equipment manufacturer has raised nearly 100 million.

Memory modules are playfully referred to by the market as the "black gold bars with price increases exceeding that of gold." Some industry insiders even joke that the value of a box of high - end DDR5 memory modules "has surpassed that of many properties in Shanghai."

Let's give a quick science lesson for those who are not familiar: Memory is essentially a type of storage chip. All chips used for data storage belong to the category of storage chips. Among them, they can be divided into volatile storage and non - volatile storage according to whether data is lost when the power is cut off. The "memory" we usually mention in daily life typically refers to DRAM, which belongs to volatile storage and is responsible for high - speed, temporary data reading and writing. Mobile phones, SSDs, and server hard drives mainly use non - volatile storage represented by NAND Flash, which is responsible for long - term data storage.

Over the past decade, storage chips have always been a core branch of the semiconductor industry. The logic behind this round of memory price increases is also clear: The demand for AI computing power has exploded, and the storage chip market has risen accordingly.

Large - model training and inference have put forward unprecedented requirements for data throughput, bandwidth, and capacity. On the one hand, it has increased the demand for high - end memory represented by HBM and DRAM. On the other hand, it has also significantly boosted the demand for high - speed storage centered around NAND Flash to carry massive amounts of training data and model parameters.

Meanwhile, the single - machine memory and storage configuration in AI servers are much higher than those in traditional servers. This has transformed storage chips from "accessories" to "core resources," rewritten the supply - demand structure, and become one of the most important industrial variables driving the upward cycle of this round of storage chips.

If we break down the storage industry chain, the chip is just the starting point. What determines whether a storage chip can enter large - scale application are the subsequent packaging, module, testing, and verification processes. In the crucial link of testing equipment, the market has long been highly monopolized by Teradyne (USA) and Advantest (Japan). With the improvement of the R & D and mass - production capabilities of domestic storage chips, the industry chain's demand for domestic testing equipment is constantly growing, which provides a huge opportunity for Chinese storage testing equipment startups. The market has begun to expand from "following the localization of chips" to "filling the gaps in testing equipment."

Recently, Luanqi Technology announced the completion of a nearly 100 - million - yuan Series B financing led by Zhongke Chuangxing, with participation from Hetang Capital, Yixin Capital, etc. The financing funds will be mainly used for expanding production, increasing R & D investment, and laying out new product lines. The company's core technology is the testing and verification technology for storage products based on NAND Flash chips, filling the gap in the domestic high - end storage testing equipment field.

Filling the Gap in Domestic Storage Testing

Looking back to around 2022, it was regarded as an inflection point in the storage industry. Prices, demand, and inventory were all at the bottom, with many manufacturers under pressure and the sentiment in the capital market approaching freezing point. In 2023, the global price of dynamic random - access memory (DRAM) plummeted by more than 40%. Changxin Technology, now known as the "first domestic storage chip stock," suffered a huge loss of 20 billion yuan that year.

An investment manager from Yunze Capital told Touzhongwang that the storage industry is not a short - distance race but a typical industry with "major fluctuations every three to five years, or even longer cycles."

"Everyone is focusing on the chips themselves, but we are more concerned about the industry chain behind the chips." The investment manager from Yunze Capital clearly remembers that at that time, there were already many domestic manufacturers of wafer testing equipment in the industry, but there were still obvious gaps in storage module testing and RF testing. "This is a neglected breakpoint. If domestic players want to truly complete the entire industrial chain, someone must step up to fill this gap."

In February 2023, Luanqi Technology completed tens of millions of yuan in Series A financing, exclusively invested by Yunze Capital. The funds were mainly used for the R & D of new products to enhance the company's core competitiveness.

Luanqi Technology focuses on the R & D and sales of testing equipment for storage semiconductor products such as SSDs, UFSs, and NAND chips. It provides testing equipment and solutions for semiconductor storage products and is the only domestic storage testing equipment manufacturer covering the entire process from R & D testing, automated production testing, mass - production testing, to product introduction testing. The company was founded in 2022, and its core members have previously worked at global semiconductor and technology giants such as AMD, Samsung, LSI, Seagate, CNEXLabs, ZTE, and Huawei. The team has collaborated for more than 10 years and has rich industry experience and in - depth technical accumulation.

The founder, Cen Biao, is a senior storage industry professional. His career path has almost covered the entire storage ecosystem, with complete experience in product R & D, testing, and production line delivery. In his early years, he was engaged in the development of GPUs and related products at AMD. At the end of 2012, he switched to the storage field and joined LSI, one of the first large - scale enterprises to commercialize SSDs. There he was in charge of consumer - grade products, mainly serving brand customers such as HP, Apple, and Intel.

In 2015, Cen Biao joined the US company CNEXLabs, focusing on enterprise - level and data - center storage solutions, serving global first - tier Internet and data - center customers such as Apple, Microsoft, Dell, and Meta. Throughout his career, he has been involved from product project initiation, R & D, mass - production to final delivery, accumulating comprehensive industrial insights.

After years of in - depth involvement in the industry, Cen Biao found that storage testing equipment was a major shortcoming in the domestic ecosystem. Therefore, he founded Luanqi with his old partners, hoping to use "industry experience" to support the key technological breakthroughs needed for domestic substitution. He and his team also co - wrote the authoritative professional book "A Comprehensive Guide to SSDs," which is used as a textbook in many universities.

According to Cen Biao, compared with 2024, Luanqi's revenue increased more than tenfold in 2025, and the commercialization pace significantly accelerated. Meanwhile, the customer structure has also been upgraded. Luanqi is no longer just conducting experimental cooperation with module manufacturers but is gradually meeting the needs of higher - level global industrial customers.

Intensive Capital Layout in the Storage Track

From a more macro perspective of the market space, storage testing equipment is in a stage of being re - priced. According to data from institutions such as IDC and ExpertMarketResearch, in 2025, in the global semiconductor testing equipment market, the market size of NAND Flash testing equipment alone exceeded 20 billion US dollars. At the same time, reports predict that the global SSD market size will exceed 175 billion US dollars in 2026 and maintain an average annual compound growth rate of about 15%.

Corresponding to the huge market space is the accelerating rise of domestic storage chips. On December 30, 2025, Changxin Technology's IPO application on the Science and Technology Innovation Board was officially accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange, planning to raise 29.5 billion yuan, becoming one of the most highly anticipated technology IPOs at the beginning of 2026. As the "first domestic storage chip stock," Changxin Technology is in the DRAM field, the core of the memory industry, and its products are widely used in scenarios such as data centers, communication equipment, mobile terminals, and intelligent manufacturing.

As domestic leading manufacturers such as YMTC and Changxin Storage systematically fill the gaps in the supply chain, the industry focus is accelerating towards the equipment end.

If chip design and wafer manufacturing are the starting points of the storage industry chain, then storage testing is the key gateway connecting products and the market. After wafer manufacturing is completed, bad chips are first removed through CP testing (wafer probing) to save subsequent packaging costs. After packaging is completed, the final performance is verified through FT testing (final testing). Finally, at the application end, systematic compatibility and reliability screening are also required.

As the "last checkpoint" before chip and system mass - production, the industrial value of testing equipment is being re - recognized by capital. Recent financing cases show that the market has gradually reached a consensus on the long - term certainty of technological innovation and domestic substitution in the Chinese storage industry.

On January 9, Shenzhen Jiutian Ruixin completed a Series B+ financing led by Shenzhen Changsheng Industrial Coordination Fund, with participation from Futian Guidance Fund. The company focuses on the R & D of neuromorphic sensing - storage - computing integrated architecture chips and promotes the implementation and mass - production of "sensing - storage - computing" integrated chips through analog - digital hybrid technology.

On January 5, Beijing Mingxin Qirui completed a Pre - Series A financing of over 100 million yuan, jointly led by Guokai Kechuang and Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group, with participation from SMIC Capital, Shunxi Fund, and Hengyu Investment. The company is based on the advanced process node RRAM resistive random - access memory, combined with storage - computing integration and advanced packaging technology, trying to break through the "memory wall" bottleneck at the bottom and provide "sensing - storage - computing" integrated solutions for AI, industry, and data centers.

"When a piece of equipment truly enters the production line, it is associated with hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars' worth of chip assets. Once something goes wrong, the cost will be catastrophic." The investment manager from Yunze Capital described the risk nature of the storage equipment industry in this way. The storage testing industry has extremely high risk and barriers, and any new equipment must go through an almost rigorous verification cycle, rather than just entering the market based on concepts.

He clearly remembers that before Luanqi's first prototype was officially shipped, it was actively taken by several module manufacturers for comparative testing. "They would first test their chips and modules on Luanqi's equipment and then on mature foreign equipment. We also saw the test reports from both sides, and the results were very similar."

In the view of Yunze Capital, this is an extremely crucial signal: It means that Luanqi already has the strength to compete with international manufacturers in terms of engineering capabilities and technical foundation, and it is an industrial - grade product system that can be taken seriously. "We can clearly feel that it is no longer a single company fighting alone but the entire domestic storage system moving forward," he said.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Dongshisi Tiao Capital" (ID: DsstCapital), author: Wei Xianghui, editor: Liu Yanqiu, published by 36Kr with authorization.