13-day-old buyer takes US$48.5M 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 US$48.5M. At US$2.73 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 US$440M, 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 –US$23.5M, net profit attributable to shareholders of –US$31.1M, and non-recurring net profit of –US$31.1M. Its shares were tagged *ST from April 24. A 2026 half-year forecast projects revenue of US$1.89M to US$2.12M and a net loss of US$409.8K to US$578.9K.
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 US$2.89 on July 30, a market value of US$347.9M.
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
