Yu Renrong, the only semiconductor executive to attend a symposium hosted by Xi Jinping with other Chinese entrepreneurs last week, has quickly become the face of the nation’s chipmakers.
In a video released by the mainland’s state broadcaster CCTV, the 58-year-old founder of Shanghai-listed Will Semiconductor – wearing a black coat – was seen sitting alongside Xiaomi founder Lei Jun and BYD founder Wang Chuanfu, while delivering a speech with papers in his hands.
He was one of six entrepreneurs who spoke at the meeting, along with Huawei Technologies founder Ren Zhengfei.
Yu’s presence at the meeting, along with Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma, Tencent founder Pony Ma Huateng and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, did not go unnoticed. On Wednesday, Will Semiconductor’s shares jumped by the 10 per cent daily limit in Shanghai.
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Yu founded Will Semiconductor in 2007 and has made successful investments in other chip companies. He was China’s 81st richest person with a net worth of US$4.72 billion, according to a list released by Forbes in November.
In another list by Hurun Research Institute in November, he was called “China’s Semiconductor King” and dubbed the country’s most generous person, with a donation of US$745 million for a new university, the Eastern Institute of Technology, in his hometown.
Born in Ningbo, a coastal city in eastern Zhejiang province, Yu graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University in 1990. His alma mater counts a number of other founders of Chinese semiconductor companies as alumni, including Zhao Weiguo, the former chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup; Zhao Lidong, of Enflame Technology, a leading graphics-processing unit developer; and Feng Chenhui of Maxscend Microelectronics, which makes radio frequency chips.
After graduation, Yu joined Chinese information technology firm Inspur Group as an engineer and then took on executive roles at a few companies that distributed electronics components – before pivoting to chip design.
Will Semiconductor initially designed analogue chips. A decade after its founding, Yu took the company public in Shanghai.
In 2019, the company bought OmniVision Technologies, a US developer of CMOS image sensors (CIS), for US$2.2 billion. The deal made Will Semiconductor the world’s third-largest supplier of CIS, behind Sony Group and Samsung Electronics.
The company said the rapid adoption of its image sensors in the smartphone and automotive sectors would provide a huge boost to its revenue. For 2024, the company expected its operating income to rise up to 23 per cent from a year earlier to 25.8 billion yuan (US$3.4 billion), “a historical high”, it said in a stock exchange filing last month.
The company’s shares are up nearly 30 times since it went public in May 2017, thanks in large part to the OmniVision deal. Its market value stood at almost 200 billion yuan as of Wednesday.
Yu keeps a low profile and barely speaks to the media. In an interview with the state-backed Securities Times newspaper in September, the entrepreneur said he was confident about China’s semiconductor industry.
“The reason why I am full of confidence in the semiconductor industry is that the Chinese people are diligent,” Yu said.
“When OmniVision was reorganised five or six years ago, it lagged behind [foreign rivals] ... and it is now slowly approaching or even surpassing them.”
Yu’s investment style was “quick and decisive”, according to another report from Venture Capital Daily in 2023, citing people close to Yu. They added that “every step he took was just half a step faster than the times”.
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