Milestone

13-day-old buyer takes ¥353M stake in loss-making chipmaker Tianjian

What's the deal? Chengdu-listed *ST Tianjian (002977.SZ) — Chengdu Tianjian TechnologyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — said on July 28 that controlling shareholder Lou Jiyong and 5%-plus holder Chen Lei will sell a combined 17.745 million shares — 14.77% of the company — to Chengdu Junxiang Tairui for ¥353 million. At ¥19.89 per share, the sale does not change Tianjian's controlling shareholder or actual controller.

What Tianjian does: The company develops and makes high-band, high-power solid-state microwave front ends, including missile-borne transmitters and phased-array products used in radar-guided missile systems, satellite communications, and electronic warfare.

Why the buyer stands out: Junxiang Tairui was set up on July 13 — just 13 days before the July 26 agreement. Its executive partner, Shenzhen Ruiqi Shengjing, also runs another fund, Jinhui Hengji, which is 90% owned by Hebei Zhongke, a company holding a large intelligent-computing centre project.

The compute link: Hebei Zhongke focuses on supercomputing power, cloud, big data, and storage. In February 2025 its Hebei AI computing centre phase-one EPC contract, worth over ¥3.2 billion, was awarded to a China Construction Fifth Engineering Bureau consortium, targeting more than 8,000 PFLOPS of single-site capacity.

What's next? The new shareholder says it holds the stake for industrial investment and long-term operation and wants business cooperation. Asked whether that could involve compute, a Tianjian representative told Time Finance , "现在暂时还不清楚" — for now it is unclear. The buyer has pledged no asset injections for 36 months.

The pressure: Tianjian faces delisting risk. In 2025 it posted revenue of –¥171 million, net profit attributable to shareholders of –¥226 million, and non-recurring net profit of –¥226 million. Its shares were tagged *ST from April 24. A 2026 half-year forecast projects revenue of ¥13.76 million to ¥15.43 million and a net loss of ¥2.98 million to ¥4.21 million.

What could go wrong? The deal is at an early announcement stage. Any cooperation, and whether Tianjian can reverse its losses, remains uncertain — the representative said outcomes depend on how the transfer progresses. Shares hit their daily limit on July 29, closing down 9.8%, then fell a further 2.41% to ¥21.02 on July 30, a market value of ¥2.53 billion.

The signal: A newly formed vehicle backed by compute-infrastructure money buying into a struggling defence-electronics firm reflects how China's AI computing boom is reaching into distressed listed companies. For now, the strategic logic is unspoken — and the delisting clock keeps ticking.

Read more: 36Kr

Image credit: Generated with Gemini

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