Soaring 80%, another Hurun-listed billionaire is gearing up for an IPO.

Who could have imagined that Zhong Peifeng, a Hurun Rich List member who has made billions of yuan in the A-share market and holds a personal fortune of 7.5 billion yuan, would also join the fray in the Hong Kong stock market.

Recently, key updates have emerged in the capital market: the Listing Committee of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has reviewed the H-share listing application of Amlogic at its meeting, and sent a letter to the joint sponsors. While the letter does not constitute formal listing approval, it marks that Amlogic has taken a key step toward building an "A+H" dual capital platform. Once successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, this chip giant with a market value of nearly 40 billion yuan will add a remarkable stroke to the capital territory of this "Silicon Valley top scholar couple".

While the outside world is marveling that another Chinese billionaire is about to make a splash in the Hong Kong stock market, the suspense behind this sprint has only just begun. Together with his wife Chen Yibing, they not only entered the semiconductor track side by side in Silicon Valley, but also made their way onto the Hurun Rich List relying on the "fingernail-sized" chips used in TVs and set-top boxes, ranking 3635th globally with a wealth of 7.5 billion yuan.

Looking at the latest financial data, Amlogic has delivered an extremely impressive performance: in the first three quarters of 2026, its revenue soared to nearly 7.2 billion yuan, the net profit attributable to shareholders surged by more than 80% year on year, and it is even on track to hit the 10 billion yuan full-year revenue mark. One out of every three smart set-top boxes and one out of every five smart TVs worldwide is equipped with their chips, making it worthy of the title of the "hidden king" of global set-top box chips.

1

All the capital miracles, controversies and games are ultimately tied to the core figure behind Amlogic — Zhong Peifeng.

Born in 1963, Zhong Peifeng is a typical technical "Silicon Valley top scholar". In the 1980s, he pursued a master's degree in electrical engineering at the top Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States, where he met Chen Yibing, a junior schoolmate who was also studying there. The two not only got married, but also became the most tacit partners on the entrepreneurial battlefield. After graduation, Zhong Peifeng worked for many years at North American semiconductor giants including Amtek and Nortel, gaining a thorough understanding of overseas supply chains and R&D methodologies.

In 1995, the couple registered Amtek in Silicon Valley. With extraordinary perseverance, they developed self-developed VCD decoding chips, which perfectly caught the booming domestic market trend and earned them their first pot of gold in life. However, when the VCD dividend faded quickly and the industry began to decline, Zhong Peifeng never stuck to a single track. In 2003, he made the most critical decision in his entrepreneurial career: moving the entire business center back to Zhangjiang, Shanghai, and establishing Amlogic Semiconductor with a registered capital of 1 million US dollars.

Zhong Peifeng avoided the fiercely competitive red ocean of mobile phone main chips, and focused all his efforts on SoCs for smart TVs and set-top boxes. With almost strict requirements on cost and delivery, he pushed Amlogic to the peak of the industry. In August 2019, Amlogic landed on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board as one of the first batch of enterprises. After 20 years of hard work, he turned a fabless design company into the "hidden king" of global set-top box chips. Chen Yibing was in charge of technical work in the early years, while Zhong Peifeng took overall control, and the couple were repeatedly listed on the Hurun Global Rich List with a total net worth of 7.5 billion yuan.

In the eyes of people in the industry, Zhong Peifeng is a boss who understands technology, emphasizes efficiency, but has a relatively strong management style. This decisive character is also reflected in his capital operations: at the peak of the company's performance, the controlling shareholder controlled through an offshore structure decisively reduced its holdings to cash out 3.4 billion yuan, and then quickly pushed Amlogic to the Hong Kong stock market, planning to invest about 70% of the planned raised funds in the R&D of 6nm and edge-side AI chips.

Looking back at Zhong Peifeng's personal resume, this decisive capital and technical acumen at critical moments runs through his entire entrepreneurial journey.

2

Betting on the business behind televisions.

You may have never heard of "Amlogic", but your living room has long been firmly dominated by its products. When you get home, pick up the remote control to turn on the TV, switch to the 4K channel, and cast the video from your mobile phone to the big screen, the picture completes smooth decoding within a few seconds, which relies entirely on a fingernail-sized SoC main control chip running at full speed. But in this seemingly boring and niche track, Amlogic has achieved absolute dominance that is unattainable for its peers.

According to data from Frost & Sullivan, calculated based on relevant revenue in 2024, Amlogic has a 31.5% market share in the global smart set-top box SoC sector, ranking first in the world; its smart TV SoC market share reaches 16.8%, ranking second globally and first in mainland China. This means that one out of every three smart set-top boxes and one out of every five smart TVs worldwide is equipped with Amlogic's chips. What is more impressive is its customer portfolio: from Xiaomi, Hisense, TCL, Skyworth, Changhong, Haier, to overseas giant Samsung, almost all hardware giants in the living room economy are "working" for Amlogic.

This extremely staggering market penetration directly supports an astonishing "money printing machine". By the end of last year, the cumulative shipment of Amlogic's chips had exceeded 1 billion units. In August 2019, as one of the first batch of hard technology enterprises, it was listed on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board, winning the title of "the first Sci-Tech Innovation Board AI chip stock". From 2023 to 2025, the company's revenue reached 53.71 billion yuan, 59.26 billion yuan and 67.91 billion yuan respectively; in the first half of 2026, revenue continued to surge 31.86% year on year to 43.9 billion yuan, with a net profit of 6.1 billion yuan.

In 2026, its financial results are even more outstanding: the estimated revenue for the first three quarters soared to 70.8 billion to 71.8 billion yuan, up about 40% year on year; the net profit attributable to shareholders directly increased by more than 80%, reaching an astonishing performance of 12.6 billion to 13.1 billion yuan, and hitting the 100 billion yuan full-year revenue target is well within reach.

Moreover, it has continuously launched new growth stories, quickly breaking free from the constraints of traditional businesses and launching a full-scale sprint towards 6nm advanced process, Wi-Fi 6 high-speed connection and edge-side AI chips. Among them, the sales volume of 6nm chips has reached nearly 9 million units, the shipment of self-developed edge-side AI chips has exceeded 20 million units, and its products are even deeply embedded in Google Gemini AI smart terminals.

3

The capital market never lacks myths, but it never hides contrasts either.

While the outside world is still marveling at Amlogic's dominance in the home terminal sector, the controlling shareholder's "hollowing out-style" cash out in the A-share market has laid a thought-provoking foreshadowing for this Hong Kong listing. Since 2023, the controlling shareholder Amlogic Semiconductor (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. has carried out five large-scale share reductions in succession through block trades, inquiry transfer and other methods.

Especially in early 2026, Amlogic Inc. issued an announcement that the controlling shareholder transferred 13.1 million shares at a price of 82.85 yuan per share, cashing out 1.085 billion yuan in a single transaction. Its shareholding ratio has dropped from the early high point to the current 18.86%. If all equity transfers since 2023 are included, the total amount of cash out by the controlling shareholder has approached 34.2 billion yuan.

According to the data previously disclosed by the official, Amlogic's financial statements can even be called brilliant, but behind this surging performance, there is an extremely strange deviation in the company's operating cash flow. In 2024, 2025 and the first half of 2026, the net cash flow generated from Amlogic's operating activities was 10.42 billion yuan, -2.3 billion yuan and -5.02 billion yuan respectively. At the same time, the company's inventory surged from 14.1 billion yuan in 2024 to 35.39 billion yuan by the end of June 2026, and accounts receivable also soared sharply to 8.62 billion yuan.

Now Amlogic is preparing to invest about 70% of the funds planned to be raised from the Hong Kong listing in the R&D of 6nm and more advanced processes and edge-side AI. On the one hand, it has frequently reduced its holdings and cashed out tens of billions of yuan in the A-share market, and on the other hand, it has publicly announced its sprint for Hong Kong stock IPO. This seemingly contradictory operation logic constitutes the most intriguing core of this capital game.

Now, the open-ended suspense in front of him is still heavy. When this "Silicon Valley model" that relies on overseas structures and focuses on niche tracks has come to today, can the Hong Kong stock market pay for this seemingly brilliant transcript that hides hidden worries about cash flow and related party transactions? Is the secondary listing of this 7.5 billion-yuan billionaire the eve of the next round of technological explosion, or a key step in the capital transformation game? This is not only the answer that the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong needs to examine, but also the ultimate question left for all investors in the secondary market to think about.

The answer may soon be officially announced by the bell ringing at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Investor", author: Bifeng, authorized for release by 36Kr.