STAR Market Daily reported on Oct. 21 that Xinai Technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. has completed an A2 round of nearly 1.5 billion yuan.

Investors in the round include Victory Giant Technology, Rockchip, Wuyuefeng Capital, Xiamen Lianhe Capital, Yuexiu Industrial Fund, Heli Capital, Teda Science & Technology Investment, Lingqing Investment, Menghai Investment, Jiangsu High-tech Investment, Addor Capital, Zijin Sci-Tech and Ruishi Fund. Existing backers including Wuyuefeng Capital, Xiamen Lianhe Capital, Yuexiu Industrial Fund, Heli Capital, Teda Science & Technology Investment, Lingqing Investment and Menghai Investment all put in more money.

The proceeds will go toward three things: expanding capacity for high-end FCBGA packaging substrates, developing glass substrates, and joint research on domestic substitution for core materials.

Xinai Technology has now raised more than 5 billion yuan in total. Data from Cailianpress VC Link and Zhizhen puts the probability of the company raising again within the next two years at 81.05%, using October 2026 as the forecast baseline.

What Gets a Company Founded in 2021 to This Number

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in the Pukou district of Nanjing, Jiangsu province, Xinai Technology focuses on the research, manufacturing and sale of high-end IC packaging substrates.

Founder Zhang Chuihong invented the Coreless ETS substrate used in mobile phones. The company says it has a fully staffed high-end substrate expert team that is scarce in the industry, combining talent across IC design, substrate R&D and manufacturing. Its core team comes from leading international firms, with experience in technology development, yield control in mass production, supply chain management and business development, and decades of work in IC design and packaging.

Its product line spans FCBGA, FCCSP and Coreless ETS. Targeting the shortfall in substrates for AI servers and high-end smartphone SoCs, the company is building out next-generation advanced packaging technologies including glass substrates and chiplet interconnect substrates, and is pursuing joint research on domestic alternatives for core materials. Related products have already been validated by a leading Chinese AI chip company.

Seven Months from Samples to China's Top OSAT Houses

Packaging substrates are known for long qualification cycles and high technical barriers, and how fast a supplier gets designed in often says more than its capacity numbers.

By the company's account, its products cleared qualification at leading Chinese OSAT firms including JCET, Huatian Technology and TongFu Microelectronics just seven months after samples were submitted, and won approved-supplier status with ASE and SPIL within 10 months. It now supplies all of the world's top 10 non-US packaging houses. Exports accounted for close to 70% of its products in 2025, and delivery capacity has scaled alongside customers moving into mass production.

The company expects demand from AI to open an expansion window for high-end IC packaging substrates, with technology iteration and supply chain localization both accelerating.

Where the Other Players in This Race Stand

Capital has warmed up first. In October 2026, Xinjude Technology closed an A round of more than 100 million yuan, backed by Anhui Hi-Tech Investment and Guangde Tongrui Equity Investment. In October 2025, Maike Technology raised an A round in the hundreds of millions of yuan from investors including Oriza PuHua, GLP Hidden Hill Capital, Chengdu Finance Holding, Chengdu Hi-Tech Investment and Lishi Venture Capital.

On capacity and technical progress, each company sits at a different point.

Shennan Circuits has moved its Guangzhou FC-BGA substrates into mass production for products of 22 layers and below, with R&D and prototyping for 24 layers and above on schedule. Its Nantong phase-four plant and its Thailand facility came online in the second half of 2025 and are steadily ramping.

Huatian Technology (as written in the original) has begun small-volume production of panel-level packaging products.

BOE Technology has produced 24-layer glass substrate carriers larger than 100 by 100 millimeters, passing all in-house reliability tests. It is now working with customers to package the carriers with real CPUs and GPUs and run electrical performance tests inside servers.

On the policy side, Beijing's municipal government has issued its digital economy development plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan period, calling for breakthroughs in frontier chip technologies including compute-in-memory chips, silicon photonics, advanced packaging and chiplets, and high-performance optical interconnects.

The Gap Is Widening, but the Chokepoint Is Upstream

Prismark forecasts that global output value for boards of more than 18 layers, HDI and packaging substrates will grow 79.0%, 23.0% and 28.8% year over year respectively in 2026.

CITIC Securities calls ABF packaging substrates one of the PCB segments with the most durable exposure to AI growth, a deep beneficiary of the shift from boards to carriers, and positioned for a rapid expansion in both market size and profit. The brokerage expects the industry's capacity shortfall to keep widening in the near term and price increases to hold. Looking at the picture from both the Chinese board makers' and Chinese customers' sides, CITIC argues the market has reached the inflection point for domestic ABF carriers to scale up broadly, and sees upside in the earnings leverage of domestic suppliers' ABF carrier businesses.

Guolian Minsheng favors the glass substrate route: glass has a coefficient of thermal expansion closer to silicon, plus low dielectric loss, high mechanical strength, heat resistance and high wiring density. Its surface is flatter than that of organic substrates (ABF carriers), which helps with fine-line processing, eases packaging thermal stress and addresses warpage in large formats. Prismark forecasts glass substrates will reach 30% penetration in IC packaging within three years and more than 50% within five.

The risks are just as clear.

Sinolink Securities notes that Samsung Electro-Mechanics' ABF carrier expansion plans are running into equipment procurement bottlenecks. Zheshang Securities points out that upstream key materials such as ABF film, BT resin, high-end HVLP copper foil and quartz fabric remain heavily dependent on Japanese suppliers, with localization still at an early or nascent stage. Manufacturing yield and mass-production capability for ultra-high-layer-count boards have become the key bottleneck constraining the next generational jump in AI hardware.