TMTPOST -- In an industry dominated by PhDs, returning overseas engineers and capital-intensive laboratories, one of China’s most successful semiconductor entrepreneurs stands out for an unlikely reason: he has no university degree.

Cai Huabo, a high-school graduate from a poor family in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, has built Longsys Electronics into a global memory-chip company with a market value exceeding 100 billion yuan ($14 billion). Starting from a tiny trading counter in Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei electronics market in the late 1990s, Cai and his twin sister have transformed the business into one of China’s leading independent memory suppliers, now competing internationally with industry giants such as Samsung and SK Hynix.

In 2025, Longsys began preparations for a Hong Kong initial public offering, aiming to establish a dual A-share and H-share capital platform. In the third quarter alone, the company reported revenue growth of more than 50%, while quarterly profits jumped nearly 20-fold year on year. Its products were sold in more than 60 countries, with quarterly revenue surpassing that of several better-known domestic chipmakers combined.

The rise of Longsys offers a rare case study in how a Chinese company broke into one of the most technically demanding and geopolitically sensitive segments of the global technology supply chain.

Cai arrived in Shenzhen in 1996 after graduating from high school. Without formal training in engineering or business, he found work behind a counter in Huaqiangbei, the sprawling electronics bazaar often called “China’s Silicon Valley of components.”

“There were no grand plans,” Cai recalled in an earlier interview. “Just learning what resistors were, what capacitors were, how people priced things.”

Three years later, encouraged by his older brother, Cai decided to start his own business with his twin sister, Cai Lijiang. They combined characters from their names and their zodiac sign to create the company name “Longsys.” At first, the business was little more than arbitrage — buying and reselling electronic components.

A turning point came in 2002 when Cai misjudged market demand and accumulated a large inventory of Japanese flash memory chips that turned out to be incompatible with mainstream products. Cash flow tightened rapidly.

Instead of writing off the inventory, Cai made a risky decision: partner with a technical team to turn the chips into finished USB drives and sell those directly.

The gamble paid off unexpectedly. In 2003, Apple’s iPod triggered a global surge in demand for flash memory, creating shortages across the market. Longsys’s once-unsellable stock suddenly became highly sought after. Cai cleared his inventory at a profit and learned a critical lesson.

“Pure trading is fragile,” he later said. “You need your own products, your own technology.”

That insight pushed Longsys toward manufacturing.

From OEM to Brand Builder

Longsys became an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), producing storage products for other brands. But margins were thin — often below 10% — and most of the profits flowed to upstream giants like Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix.

In 2011, Cai decided to launch Longsys’s own brand, FORESEE, targeting industrial and enterprise customers rather than mass consumers. The strategy focused on reliability over price.

By 2012, FORESEE’s industrial-grade storage products, capable of operating in extreme temperatures from minus 40°C to 85°C, were adopted by China’s State Grid and railway systems. In 2015, the brand became a core supplier to Transsion, a Chinese handset maker that dominates many African markets.

Yet Cai’s ambitions went further — into the global consumer market.

That opportunity came in 2017 when Micron decided to divest Lexar, its consumer storage brand best known for memory cards used in professional cameras and even NASA missions.

Few expected a relatively unknown Chinese company to acquire such a brand. But Cai saw Lexar’s brand recognition and global distribution as a shortcut to international markets.

After completing the deal, Longsys shut down Lexar’s US factory and shifted production to China, cutting costs by around 40% through automation and supply-chain integration. It also invested heavily in software optimisation and performance tuning.

What Micron had considered a non-core, loss-making business soon became profitable again. Lexar products now rank among top sellers on Amazon marketplaces worldwide, introducing Longsys to a global consumer audience.

In memory products, the “brain” is the controller chip — the semiconductor that manages data storage, error correction and communication with devices. Control over controllers is strategically important and technologically difficult.

For years, Chinese storage companies relied heavily on foreign controller suppliers. Cai decided that Longsys had to develop its own.

In 2016, Longsys formed a deep partnership with US chipmaker Marvell, gaining access to low-level firmware and source code — an unusual arrangement that allowed the company to build internal expertise.

In 2020, Longsys established a dedicated controller R&D team. By then, it employed more than 1,100 engineers, most with postgraduate degrees.

The result was the “WM” (Wise Memory) controller series:

• WM6000/5000/3000 for eMMC and SD cards, with shipments exceeding 100 million units;

• WM7400 for UFS 4.1 storage, using advanced process technology and third-generation LDPC error-correction algorithms.

Independent testing showed that the products matched or exceeded international competitors in performance, power efficiency and stability.

Longsys further integrated design and manufacturing through acquisitions in China and Brazil, allowing engineers and production lines to operate side by side.

At its Zhongshan industrial park, designers work upstairs while automated packaging and testing lines operate below. The model — which Cai calls “Office is Factory” — cut new-product development cycles by more than six months.

This integration enabled Longsys to launch its PTM (Product-Technology-Manufacturing) model, offering customised storage solutions for clients such as Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO and BYD, covering everything from controller design to final testing.

Longsys’s rise mirrors the broader evolution of China’s semiconductor sector: from dependence on imports and low-margin assembly toward higher-value design, branding and system integration.

It also illustrates the importance of unconventional entrepreneurs in China’s technology development — people who may lack formal credentials but possess acute market instincts and a willingness to take large risks.

From a small counter in Huaqiangbei to a multinational chipmaker preparing for a Hong Kong listing, Cai Huabo’s story reflects both the opportunities and the intensity of competition in the global semiconductor race.

In a sector shaped by geopolitics, capital and cutting-edge science, Longsys has shown that timing, strategy and persistence can still carve out space — even for a company that began with little more than a rented stall and a bold idea.