(Yicai) July 9 -- The impending initial public offering of ChangXin Memory Technologies, a Chinese memory chip champion, could send founder Zhu Yiming’s personal fortune soaring to as much as CNY90 billion (USD12.4 billion).

CXMT will open IPO subscriptions next week, setting July 16 as the date for both institutional and retail investors, the Hefei-based company announced today. CXMT plans to raise CNY29.5 billion, which would make it the second-largest floatation on Shanghai’s seven-year-old Star Market.

If CXMT’s market capitalization hits the CNY2 trillion to CNY3 trillion (USD275.8 billion to USD413.8 billion) forecast by analysts, Zhu’s stake would be worth CNY47.8 billion to CNY71.7 billion. Add that to his other assets and he could be worth CNY90 billion.

Zhu, who is also CXMT’s chairman, indirectly owns 1.6 billion of the firm’s shares through three investment platforms, equal to nearly 2.7 percent of the total equity before it lists, according to the prospectus. That will fall to about 2.4 percent after the IPO and before the over-allotment option.

His actual post-listing wealth is likely to be lower than the headline figure, however. Zhu has said that half of the roughly 1.5 billion founder-contribution shares granted to him by CXMT’s board would eventually be allocated to an employee incentive program. That implies that his actual net worth will be lower once all relevant share arrangements are finalized.

Zhu ranked 584th on the 2025 Hurun China Rich List, with an estimated net worth of CNY12 billion (USD1.7 billion) at the time. His wealth was mainly tied to his stake in GigaDevice Semiconductor, the flash memory chip designer he founded and still controls. GigaDevice’s stock price has tripled since the start of this year.

Zhu earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2000 before returning to China and setting up GigaDevice in 2005. More than a decade later, he spearheaded the creation of CXMT in 2016, building what has become China’s only DRAM wafer manufacturer capable of mass production.

Zhu stepped away from GigaDevice’s day-to-day management in 2018 and shifted his focus entirely to CXMT, pledging not to draw a salary until it turned profitable -- a commitment that resulted in him receiving no compensation from CXMT between 2018 and 2024.

The firm had its first net profit of CNY1.9 billion (USD258.1 million) last year on a 156 percent surge in revenue to CNY61.8 billion, according to the IPO prospectus. Profit came in at CNY24.8 billion in the first quarter of this year, after revenue soared over eightfold year on year to CNY50.8 billion.

For the first half, CXMT forecast profit of between CNY50 billion and CNY57 billion on revenue of CNY110 billion to CNY120 billion (USD16.2 billion to USD17.7 billion).

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione