ZhenFund Backs Global AI Silicon Photonics Chip Leader in Seed Round, *Lightelligence* Rings the Bell at Hong Kong Stock Exchange

On April 28, Lightelligence-P (01879.HK) officially listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, marking the debut of the world's first AI silicon photonics chip stock and the first company in the optoelectronic hybrid computing track to enter the capital markets.

Founded in 2017 by MIT physics PhD Yichen Shen, Lightelligence is a pioneer in technology development and commercialization within the global optoelectronic hybrid computing sector.

In 2022, Lightelligence founder and CEO Yichen Shen recalled in an interview with ZhenFund how the two first connected: "I was still a PhD student at MIT when I met ZhenFund at a startup competition on campus. Afterwards, at a coffee shop in Beijing's Guomao district, I spoke with ZhenFund founding partner Anna Fang for less than half an hour before ZhenFund decided to invest. They sent a term sheet the next day — a pace that was unprecedented. For teams working on original technology, this decision encouraged people with genuine ideas to take that first step."

In 2017, photonic computing chips weren't even a "track" — many people thought it simply couldn't be done. But the moment we first saw this prodigy, we were thrilled, and fortunate to accompany Yichen and the team on their journey ever since.

ZhenFund founding partner Anna Fang said: "You have to be willing to take risks and believe in those unproven but already-turning ideas in young people's minds."

On its first trading day, Lightelligence opened at HK$880.00, surging 380.35% above its IPO price of HK$183.2 — extending the nearly 5,800x oversubscription momentum the company saw during its book-building phase.

This Hong Kong listing both reflects capital markets' recognition of the long-term value in the optoelectronic hybrid computing track and provides the Hong Kong exchange with a scarce AI hard-tech listing. With access to public market financing, Lightelligence will also accelerate technology iteration and product deployment, strengthening the foundation of AI computing power and pushing cutting-edge hard-tech achievements toward broader commercial adoption.

Regarding the stock code "01879.HK," Shen explained that 1879 was a landmark year: Edison invented the incandescent light bulb, and light began leading the direction of the Second Industrial Revolution. In that same year, James Clerk Maxwell, founder of classical electrodynamics, passed away, and the great physicist Albert Einstein was born. With "1879," the company pays tribute to these pioneers and is committed to using light technology to inject new energy into the AI era.

Currently, global AI industry's demand for computing power is growing exponentially. At the same time, traditional data centers face bottlenecks in bandwidth, power consumption, and latency, with the gap between computing supply and market demand continuing to widen. Against this backdrop, optoelectronic hybrid computing — which introduces optical capabilities for data processing and transmission — is seen as one of the important technological directions for the evolution of computing infrastructure. According to Frost & Sullivan data, with its two product lines of optical interconnect and optical computing, Lightelligence has become the world's first company to achieve large-scale deployment of optoelectronic hybrid computing.

In 2025, Lightelligence ranked first by revenue in China's independent Scale-up optical interconnect solutions market, with approximately 88.3% market share, supporting multiple thousand-GPU clusters. The company's cumulative global shipments of optical computing chips have ranked first for two consecutive years.

The broad market prospects and scarcity of this listing earned Lightelligence high recognition from global capital markets: both international and public offerings saw impressive oversubscription ratios, with nearly 5,800x demand. The cornerstone investor list featured a strong lineup of 20 top global institutions including Alibaba, GIC, BlackRock, and Fidelity International, collectively subscribing for $209.9 million (approximately HK$1.644 billion), representing 68.14% of the offering — placing both the oversubscription multiple and cornerstone participation ratio among the top of recent Hong Kong IPOs.

Looking ahead, Lightelligence stated that IPO proceeds will be precisely focused on R&D and technology upgrades for its core business, sustainably advancing key projects including near-packaged optics (NPO), co-packaged optics (CPO), and the PACE 3 optoelectronic hybrid computing accelerator card. Per the company's plan, 70% of raised funds will go toward R&D over the next five years: 35% focused on the optical interconnect business, targeting core technologies such as high-end silicon photonics chip design and high-speed optoelectronic transmission; another 35% invested in optical computing, concentrating resources on iterating and developing next-generation optoelectronic hybrid computing cards to accelerate commercialization. Through optoelectronic fusion innovation, Lightelligence will continue to deliver efficient, low-power, and scalable underlying computing support for the global AI industry.

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