The lithography equipment for SiC, GaN and Mini LED has long been monopolized by imported products. Wending Juxin adopts a 0.35μm stepper lithography machine, filling the domestic blank in the compound semiconductor sector.
Shenzhen Wending Juxin Technology Co., Ltd. (hereafter referred to as "Wending Juxin"), which focuses on the R&D of front-end stepper lithography equipment, has launched a new round of financing. Founded in May 2023, the company is a national high-tech enterprise. Its independently developed WS180i series high-precision stepper lithography machines were successfully delivered in 2025, aiming to fill the gap of domestic equipment in specific advanced manufacturing fields such as compound semiconductors.
Against the backdrop of the accelerated restructuring of the global semiconductor industrial chain and the urgent demand for domestic substitution, Wending Juxin does not target the most cutting-edge logic chip manufacturing, but the long-standing "bottleneck" problems in the compound semiconductor fields such as power devices, Mini/Micro LEDs and optical chips — lithography equipment with high precision, high flexibility and multi-material compatibility has long relied on imports. The core technology of Wending Juxin is to provide manufacturers in these fields with domestically produced solutions that are independent, controllable and more process-adaptive.
Core Pain Point: Lack of Domestic Equipment for Compound Semiconductor Manufacturing
Compound semiconductors, such as silicon carbide (SiC), gallium nitride (GaN) and Mini/Micro LEDs for high-end displays, are key materials supporting strategic industries including new energy vehicles, 5G communications and new-generation displays. However, the manufacturing processes of these materials are significantly different from traditional silicon-based chips, putting unique requirements on the precision, substrate compatibility and process flexibility of lithography equipment.
For a long time, the high-end lithography equipment market in this field has been dominated by a few international giants. Domestic manufacturers are not only faced with the challenges of high procurement costs and uncertain supply cycles, but also constrained by others in process debugging and after-sales support. Especially for a large number of domestic innovative enterprises in the R&D and small-batch production stages, imported equipment that is "unfriendly to use, unsuitable for application and unaffordable" has become the core bottleneck restricting their product iteration and mass production ramp-up. During multiple market researches, the Wending Juxin team found that many domestic power device manufacturers often get stuck when trying to turn designs into products, as they cannot obtain lithography support adapted to their special thick photoresist processes and heterogeneous substrates.
Therefore, the market is in urgent need of a cost-effective domestic lithography machine that can deeply understand local process requirements, provide rapid response and customized services, and meet application requirements in key performance indicators. This is exactly the market niche that Wending Juxin enters.
Technological Breakthrough: Key Capabilities of Self-developed Stepper Lithography Machines
Wending Juxin's solution focuses on step-and-repeat projection lithography technology. Different from the scanning lithography machines used for mass production of logic chips, stepper lithography machines work in a "step-exposure" mode, which is more suitable for multi-variety, small-batch and high-precision manufacturing scenarios, highly matching the production characteristics of compound semiconductors, advanced packaging, MEMS sensors and other fields.
The company's first mass-produced model, the WS180i series, demonstrates its breakthroughs in key technologies. According to public product materials and industry information, the equipment has a resolution ranging from 1.5μm to 0.35μm, is compatible with 2-inch to 8-inch wafers, and supports various substrate materials such as silicon, sapphire and silicon carbide. The 0.35μm resolution enables it to meet the manufacturing needs of the vast majority of Mini/Micro LED chips, mid-to-high-end power devices and some optical communication chips.
Behind the technical capabilities is the profound accumulation of the team. Most of Wending Juxin's core R&D team hold postgraduate degrees from well-known universities at home and abroad, and come from top domestic semiconductor research institutes and leading global equipment enterprises, with an average industry experience of more than 20 years. The founder was once a core member of the national "02 Major Project" (Ultra-Large-Scale Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Technology and Complete Set of Techniques), which provides the company's technical research with top-level vision and practical experience from national strategic needs to specific engineering implementation. The team has achieved forward R&D on core subsystems of lithography machines such as optical system design, precision mechanical control and alignment algorithm, ensuring the stability and process consistency of the equipment.
It is reported that the WS180i model has passed the process certification of a well-known domestic integrated circuit manufacturer and obtained initial customer orders. This marks a key step for the equipment from "laboratory prototype" to "available on customer production lines". Wending Juxin has a clear commercial path plan: in the near term, it will consolidate the market of mature processes at 0.35μm and above; in the medium term, it will extend to 0.13μm KrF and higher-level ArFi immersion lithography technologies, gradually expanding the process coverage.
Business Model and Hundred-Billion Market Space
Wending Juxin has a clear business model, that is, as a high-end semiconductor equipment manufacturer, it sells complete lithography machines, supporting process solutions and after-sales services to compound semiconductor wafer fabs, advanced packaging factories, scientific research institutions and university laboratories. Its target users are clearly domestic enterprises engaged in the R&D and production of third-generation semiconductors, high-end displays and optoelectronic devices.
According to reports from a number of industry research institutions, driven by the wave of independent development of China's semiconductor industry and strong policy support, the semiconductor equipment market continues to grow. Among them, benefiting from the outbreak of industries such as new energy vehicles and photovoltaic energy storage, the power semiconductor market is expanding rapidly, driving the demand for upstream SiC and GaN material manufacturing and processing equipment. At the same time, as the core of the next-generation display technology, the global market size of Mini/Micro LEDs is expected to exceed 10 billion US dollars in the next five years, greatly driving the demand for high-precision, high-efficiency mass transfer and chip manufacturing equipment.
Although the overall lithography machine market is highly concentrated, there is broad space for domestic equipment substitution in the fast-growing segmented track of compound semiconductors. With its in-depth understanding of the processes in the segmented field, faster customer response speed and more competitive cost, Wending Juxin is expected to occupy a place in the domestic market. The company estimates that its products can help downstream customers reduce the comprehensive equipment cost by 20%-30%, which is significantly attractive for cost-sensitive manufacturing enterprises.
Team Background and Current Progress
According to Qichacha information, the legal representative of Shenzhen Wending Juxin Technology Co., Ltd. is Chen Haixia, with a registered capital of about 1.25 million yuan, 55 employees participating in social insurance, and it has been recognized as a high-tech enterprise and a technology-based small and medium-sized enterprise. The equity structure shows that the company has obtained investments from professional institutions including Yigao Capital and Kaiding Investment, and completed Series B and Series B+ financing in 2026, indicating that its technical route and development potential have been recognized by the capital market to a certain extent.
At the present stage, Wending Juxin is in a critical period of product market promotion and team expansion. In addition to the WS180i series lithography machines that have been delivered and verified by customers, the company is also simultaneously promoting the R&D of higher-specification products. The company has a R&D and production base of more than 2,000 square meters in Shenzhen, including a high-grade clean room, with full-chain capabilities from R&D, assembly to commissioning.
In terms of team building, Wending Juxin has launched the 2027 campus recruitment, recruiting master and doctoral students majoring in microelectronics, optics, mechanics, materials and other majors from universities at home and abroad, with positions covering R&D, process, sales and other lines, aiming to build a complete talent echelon covering technology, market and application. This reserves core human capital for its subsequent technical iteration and business expansion.
Overall, Wending Juxin has chosen a differentiated and pragmatic technical research route. It does not directly challenge the world's most cutting-edge EUV lithography technology, but targets the practical and urgently to be solved "mid-to-high-end" equipment gap in the domestic supply chain. Today, when the independent development of semiconductors has become a national strategic consensus, the progress of the new round of financing and the future development of hard technology enterprises like Wending Juxin, which have solid technical foundation, clear market positioning and clear commercial path, are worthy of continuous attention.