Five years ago, she took a heavy position in CXMT.

Author: Liu Bo

A milestone moment.

On the evening of July 23, ChangXin Memory Technologies (688825.SH) announced that the company will list on the STAR Market on July 27. The IPO price is 8.66 yuan/share, with a planned fundraising amount of approximately 58 billion yuan—this means the largest IPO in the history of the STAR Market is about to ring the bell.

What outsiders may not know is that amidst this narrative of the rise of Chinese memory storage, there appeared the figure of a female investor—Dr. Peng Guie (Polly), Managing Partner of Walden International. Five years ago, it was she who, under pressure, invested nearly 900 million yuan, the largest single amount, heavily betting on ChangXin Memory Technologies against the trend.

Not long ago, Investment Circle met Dr. Peng in Beijing during her business trip. Rarely appearing in the public eye, she recounted those past stories about ChangXin for the first time.

Five Years Ago, Four Cities in One Day

Speaking of ChangXin, the first thing Dr. Peng recalled was the four cities in one day from five years ago.

It was late August 2021. At that time, Walden was holding an internal monthly meeting by the West Lake in Hangzhou. Regarding the investment topic of ChangXin, the team failed to reach a consensus for a long time during the meeting. The meeting lasted very late that day, and the ChangXin project team had discussed for a long time—the DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) track was too difficult, the risk was too high, and the cycle was too long. Most institutions avoided it, and there were also disagreements within Walden.

The concerns within the team were very specific: at that time, the industry and capital cycles were declining, confidence in the investment market was low during the epidemic, and the boom of the STAR Market was receding.

There was silence in the conference room for a long time. Until one of the partners spoke up, calmly, as if stating a fact that needed no argument: "This project must be invested in. Although there are many difficulties, I will personally invest 15 million yuan. This team is too excellent."

There was no applause, only silence. Dr. Peng later explained—when the industry is so difficult that financial models cannot quantify it, the judgment of the founder is the biggest model. "Precisely because we have seen too many failures of storage projects,

we know that in this track, people are more important than numbers."

It was late at night when the meeting adjourned. Early the next morning, when the light was dim, she caught the earliest flight and set off.

That day, Dr. Peng visited four cities. First, she flew to Beijing early in the morning to accompany the ChangXin team on roadshows to institutions.

On the plane, thick data sheets were still placed in front of her.

After the roadshow, she went non-stop to Daxing Airport to take a one-hour flight to Hefei. After arriving in Hefei in the afternoon, she went directly to the front-line workshop of the ChangXin factory. The lights in the workshop were bright, and the constant-temperature air carried a hint of coolness. ChangXin founder Zhu Yiming, wearing a cleanroom suit, pointed to the equipment in the cleanroom through the glass, explaining technical progress as he walked. She followed behind, listening while thinking about a realistic question: How much money exactly would it take to sustain this production line?

At night, they ate box lunches in the factory conference room, braised pork, and a few side dishes. Everyone chatted while eating—how to lock in capacity, how to proceed with financing, and how to walk this path step by step.

Late at night, Dr. Peng caught the last high-speed train back to Shanghai, arriving home early in the morning. A line was recorded in the mobile phone memo: "Hangzhou→Beijing→Hefei→Shanghai. Worth it."

At the subsequent Investment Committee Meeting, the Walden team discussed ChangXin repeatedly. What outsiders rarely know is that the pressure they faced at that time was much greater than imagined. As a VC institution, Walden focused more on early-stage investment, with a single investment scale usually of tens of millions of yuan, while ChangXin needed a volume close to that of a fund.

Regarding this, Dr. Peng did not talk too much about financial models, but repeatedly emphasized: "Someone has to do this. Everyone is waiting, so who are we waiting for to do it?" Finally, she overruled objections and decided to invest nearly 900 million yuan in ChangXin.

Thus, facilitating the largest single investment in the history of Walden China.

Such volume also meant that the difficulty of fundraising could not be underestimated. For this reason, Dr. Peng took the team to have painstaking long talks with LPs one by one, just to convey a consensus—investing in ChangXin is supporting the country and supporting the development of the domestic semiconductor industry. It was the long-term companionship and firm trust of the LPs behind them that gave Walden the confidence to bet heavily.

Ten Years Ago, From GigaDevice to ChangXin Memory Technologies

ChangXin was established in Hefei in 2016. Walden did not miss a single project initiation meeting or due diligence meeting for this project—Hefei Industrial Investment, which led the project, is a strategic partner of Walden for many years.

But this connection can be traced back even further.

In 2005, Zhu Yiming returned to China to found GigaDevice, and Walden stood behind him. After the company listed in 2016, he did not stop, but turned to do something more difficult, attempting to open up the DRAM market, which led to the story of ChangXin Memory Technologies.

As an investor who has deeply cultivated the semiconductor industry for many years, Dr. Peng is clear about the difficulties involved: high thresholds, large investments, long cycles, and the industrial characteristics of semiconductors are fully reflected in the DRAM track.

"At that time, domestic DRAM was not really believed in. IBM's Fab (Fabrication Plant) had collapsed, and Germany and Japan failed to build up storage with national efforts. So almost all mainstream institutions in the market at that time avoided it." Dr. Peng still remembers it vividly.

After the 2018 ZTE Incident, she became increasingly sure of one thing: China's semiconductors need their own industrial chain. The more critical point is that this matter was led by Zhu Yiming, "Companies in such key tracks and key nodes cannot be missed."

Dr. Peng has known Zhu Yiming for a long time and knows he is not the type of person to "give it a try and withdraw if it doesn't work." She saw this focus with her own eyes: "In the past, after some enterprises listed, they either got involved in real estate or crossed over into finance, but Zhu Yiming continued to deeply cultivate the storage track, which impressed us."

What moved the Walden team the most was the true big dream in Zhu Yiming's heart. He never set limits for himself or the enterprise, daring not only to think but also to do. In other words, this is an entrepreneur who is not afraid of "big things."

China's semiconductors do not lack money; what is lacking are people willing to spend ten years grinding out an industrial chain. In Dr. Peng's view, the essence of investment is precisely to connect with the entrepreneur's dream, and the entrepreneur's focus and persistence are the determination behind her move.

ChangXin Memory Technologies also lived up to expectations, completing in a few years the path that overseas giants took ten or even several decades to complete. About to witness the birth of this epic IPO, the Walden team is full of emotions. The heavy betting against the trend five years ago is vivid in mind, and Dr. Peng's feelings are even deeper. Almost all of Walden's invested enterprises are long-cycle projects, meaning the investment team has to sit on this cold bench for 10 or even 15 years.

But she always emphasized to the team that effort will never be in vain, "Institutions that started in Silicon Valley and are still running on the front line of hard technology investment are few and far between, only Walden has always persisted. Because we firmly believe that if we persist, we will see the light."

Those Who Persist Will Eventually Reap the Gifts of Time

This is like a snapshot of Dr. Peng's investment career.

Looking back to 2015 when she just joined Walden, the team's first impression on her was "engineer investors"—without the elite style of Wall Street, but this team's precise judgment on changes in China's semiconductor industry moved her.

After joining Walden, her first investment was Brain-Computer Interface—at that time, it wasn't even considered a track. She invested 3 million USD in BrainCo, at that time the company had not yet left the laboratory, and what moved her was the original intention of BrainCo founder

Han Bicheng—"Technology for Good."

Since then, she has successively invested in EET Semiconductor, Sinomicro, CanSemi... Along with ChangXin about to list on the STAR Market, this female partner who made the largest single investment in Walden China's history has proven herself with one hard-core investment after another.

Having walked ten years with Walden, Dr. Peng witnessed with her own eyes these super projects go from "no one believed" to "everyone knows." She also slowly understood one thing—what Walden does is not just investment, but standing by the enterprise's side when it needs companionship the most. This is actually a two-way rush, and it is precisely this resonance with enterprises that is the core of Walden not missing super projects.

"I often emphasize within Walden—as long as the founder does not give up, we will not give up." She described Walden as a "slow fund": not following the trend when market booms come, persisting in heavy betting against the trend during industry troughs, not chasing short-term hot spot bubbles, but settling down to accompany enterprises through cycles, this stability is the most precious background color inherited by Walden.

Just as outsiders can see, in the long list of shareholders behind ChangXin, figures of market-oriented VC/PE funds rarely appear, and Walden happens to be one of the few that accompanied and bet heavily. Recalling when ChangXin urgently needed help in the snow back then, the reason why Dr. Peng and Walden did not hesitate was not because they were smarter than others, but because she knew that when the direction is right and the people are right, the rest is waiting for time to verify.

"Perhaps pessimistic people are correct, but optimistic people can always reap rewards." Just like that night five years ago, she firmly chose optimism.

More than thirty years of Chinese venture capital, ups and downs changes. The winding river of time flows forward, some bow down to enter the game, and some quietly leave. At the end of the exchange with Investment Circle, when asked "Investing for so many years, what do you believe in the most?" Dr. Peng thought for a moment and gave the answer: "Investment is believing in time."

She remembered a senior once said: "The true meaning of investment is that the great way is simple, firmly choose to walk with like-minded people, time is the best friend, and will bring the most beautiful gifts." This sentence, she has remembered to this day.