By Yang Jianyong

On December 5th, HeT Technology encountered a major setback, with its stock plummeting by 10% in a single day. This significant decline occurred at a critical juncture in Moore Threads' IPO journey. It's noteworthy that since HeT Technology began IPO tutoring (listing guidance) in November 2024, its direct stake in Moore Threads has fueled market speculation. At one point, its market cap soared to a peak of 56 billion yuan, demonstrating remarkable performance in the capital market.

According to public data, HeT Technology holds 4.105 million shares of Moore Threads, representing 0.87% of the total share capital. The first day of trading was exceptionally vibrant. As the inaugural domestic GPU stock, it became the market's center of attention, opening at 650 yuan. The full-day trading volume reached 15.3 billion yuan, with a turnover rate as high as 85.49%. It ultimately closed at 600.5 yuan, up 425%, and achieved a market cap of 282.3 billion yuan.

Based on this valuation, HeT Technology's stake in Moore Threads is worth 2.465 billion yuan, indicating substantial investment returns. However, a stake of less than 1% in Moore Threads hardly justifies HeT Technology's lofty valuation, inevitably leading to significant volatility and carrying certain risks.

Compared to its historical high, HeT Technology's market cap has decreased by 10 billion yuan, yet it still stands at a substantial 44.5 billion yuan. In contrast, Topband, with a comparable business scale, has a market cap of only 16.7 billion yuan. On the day of Moore Threads' listing, HeT Technology's 10% decline underscored the potential risk of its valuation being disconnected from its business scale. Simultaneously, it highlighted that a stake of less than 1% is clearly insufficient to sustain such a valuation, reflecting the capital market's rational return to "concept hype."

From a revenue perspective, in the first three quarters of 2025, HeT Technology reported revenue of 8.269 billion yuan, up 17.47% year-on-year, with a net profit of 600 million yuan, up 69.66% year-on-year. In comparison, Topband reported revenue of 8.187 billion yuan, up 6.34% year-on-year, with a net profit of 420 million yuan, down 23.86% year-on-year.

HeT Technology and Topband are the most prominent manufacturers in the domestic smart controller market, both in terms of shipment volume and revenue scale. This prominence is primarily attributed to the era of AI large models, where various sectors leverage these models to accelerate intelligent upgrades, leading to robust demand for smart controllers and demonstrating steady growth.

Overall, apart from holding a minor stake in Moore Threads, which has sparked capital pursuit, HeT Technology operates in an industry with vast market potential.

According to data from the Zhongchan Research Institute, the global smart controller market was valued at 1.97 trillion US dollars in 2024 and is projected to grow to 2.05 trillion US dollars in 2025. China serves as a crucial manufacturing base and consumer market for global smart controllers, with a market size of 3.8 trillion yuan in 2024 and an average annual compound growth rate of 12.5% over the past five years. The market size is expected to reach 4.28 trillion yuan in 2025.

However, the smart controller market is vast yet fragmented, with companies in the industry generally being small in scale. Nonetheless, domestic smart controller manufacturers have emerged as the main force in the global controller industry.

Among them, HeT Technology has been deeply entrenched in the smart controller industry for 25 years. Leveraging its years of technological accumulation in the smart controller sector, it has successfully integrated cutting-edge technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, mobile internet, and communications, achieving intelligent upgrades of traditional devices.

Currently, HeT Technology's intelligent product applications span smart home appliances, smart homes, smart wearables, and health care. Its clientele includes home appliance manufacturers like Electrolux, Whirlpool, Haier, Xiaomi, and Supor, as well as automotive manufacturers like NIO, Changan, and Seres. As the industry market size continues to expand and intelligent technology upgrades permeate, its market share among key clients continues to rise.

Against the backdrop of the AI era, with increasing demand, functional upgrades, and morphological changes in controllers, HeT Technology is capitalizing on industry development cycles by continuously increasing R&D investment in automotive electronics, tools and industrial automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics. This not only meets market demands but also injects momentum into its performance growth.

Finally, since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, it has propelled artificial intelligence development to new heights. The emergence of DeepSeek, with its low cost, open-source nature, and exceptional performance, enables more enterprises to deploy AI applications at a low cost, driving AI commercialization and benefiting the entire AI ecosystem.

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of the trend towards slimming down and lightweighting large models, small models will be integrated into more end-side devices, endowing them with AI capabilities. Various end-side AI devices are emerging. With the continuous development of AI large models, new products, business formats, and models are constantly emerging, expanding the functional boundaries of smart controllers and increasing market demand. For manufacturers deeply rooted in smart controllers, there is potential for further growth.

Yang Jianyong, a Forbes China contributor, expresses views solely on behalf of himself. He is dedicated to in-depth interpretations of cutting-edge technologies such as AI large models, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and smart homes.