This low-profile 985 university in Hefei has unexpectedly captured widespread attention. This week, Guoyi Instruments officially listed on the STAR Market, creating the "first stock in quantum precision measurement," with a market value exceeding 40 billion yuan on its debut day, bringing substantial returns for its investors. Among them, one of the most noteworthy returns came from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC).

Years ago, He Yu's entrepreneurial idea first sprouted in a USTC laboratory. Since then, the technology moved out of the campus, the team delved into the industry, and the alma mater remained a shareholder, supporting them throughout their journey. Until the bell rang, this scientific achievement transformation that spanned over a decade turned into a tangible reward 鈥?a return of over 1,000 times. Across the country, similar scenarios are emerging intensively. Just like Guoyi Instruments and USTC, Z.AI and Tsinghua University, and Changjin Photon and Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), these tech companies all have universities behind them, profoundly impacting the industries of their respective cities. This is a unique era of a grand harvest for universities in the technology age.

USTC Students Join Hands to Ring the Bell, Creating a Thousand-Fold Return

The story began in 2016 in Hefei. At that time, He Yu, along with several USTC alumni including Zhang Wei and Rong Xing, squeezed into a 14-square-meter office lent by their advisor, Du Jiangfeng, to start their entrepreneurial journey. Ten years later, they stood on the IPO stage. After listing, USTC's asset management company held 53.0976 million shares, accounting for 13.27% of the total share capital. Calculated at the closing price on the IPO day, the market value of this equity exceeded 5.8 billion yuan.

All of this stemmed from a technology investment made years ago. When Guoyi Instruments was established in 2016, USTC contributed 5.1425 million yuan in non-monetary assets, obtaining a 25% equity stake. The following year, the ownership of four patents was changed, and the complete materials for a proprietary technology were formally transferred to the company. Subsequently, through several rounds of financing, USTC's shareholding was diluted, but it remained the largest external shareholder. If calculated simply based on the original technology valuation, the book return on this investment has exceeded 1,100 times. Of course, this is still unrealized wealth, as all shares are under a lock-up period. However, the story of a university accompanying its students in transforming scientific achievements and staying with the company all the way to its IPO is already touching enough.

In fact, USTC's support for He Yu began long before they became a shareholder. In 2009, He Yu was admitted to USTC's Special Class for the Gifted Young and pursued his studies all the way to a doctorate. He calls himself a "restless USTCer": organizing physics discussion groups, founding a newspaper, establishing a "Gewu Zhizhi Society" with classmates, and even working on a campus entrepreneurship project for interactive classroom clickers. That was He Yu's first startup. The team received startup funding from USTC's entrepreneurship program, and the product received a good response on campus, but it never managed to break into the larger market. This unfinished attempt allowed him to complete a business trial-and-error. The rest of the story is well known. Because his advisor, Du Jiangfeng, talked about the experience of foreign scientific instruments imposing temporary price increases and taking half a year for repairs, He Yu shifted his focus to high-end scientific instruments, leading to the founding of Guoyi Instruments in 2016. Over a decade later, the once-green young man stepped forward with a listed company. USTC witnessed his growth and accompanied him through the long years of his entrepreneurial journey. Nurturing talent and landing technology 鈥?"Red and Expert, Integrating Theory and Practice" finds a vivid annotation here.

A University, A City

The story of the bond between USTC and Hefei is still widely discussed. In 1958, when the nation urgently needed high-level scientific talent, the University of Science and Technology of China was founded in Beijing. Scientists like Qian Xuesen, Guo Yonghuai, Zhao Jiuzhang, and Hua Luogeng taught there, bringing cutting-edge research into the classroom. Twelve years later, the university relocated south to Hefei, with 8,650 tons of materials and 35,000 cases of instruments and books moving southward with the faculty and students. At that time, Hefei did not have today's industrial landscape, nor could it foresee that chips, quantum technology, and artificial intelligence would become the city's most distinctive industrial calling cards decades later. Faced with the incoming USTC, it simply did its best, with the utmost sincerity to retain the university.

Elite university and top-tier education are the talent cultivation positioning that USTC has maintained for many years. The undergraduate enrollment scale is typically controlled at around 2,000 students, with majors closely aligned with cutting-edge, frontier, and interdisciplinary fields. A saying among former students still circulates: "Desperate students go to USTC." A solid theoretical foundation, proficient experimental skills, and proficiency in one foreign language are the three essential basic skills that must be mastered. Basic courses use the most challenging textbooks, professional courses keep up with the latest scientific research progress, and students enter laboratories early to receive scientific training. Years later, this training is evident in a group of USTC entrepreneurs. Liu Qingfeng, who once studied in USTC's Special Class for the Gifted Young, co-founded iFLYTEK with 18 teachers and students during his doctoral studies; Tao Yuequn brought orthokeratology lens technology back to China and later founded Euclid Vision; Chen Yunji and Chen Tianshi were admitted to the Special Class at ages 14 and 16 respectively, later engaging in the interdisciplinary research of AI and chips before founding Cambricon; and there is Origin Quantum, which just completed a nearly 3 billion yuan Pre-IPO round, founded by USTC professor Guo Guoping. They venture into AI, medical devices, semiconductor chips, and quantum computing, all sharing a similar technological foundation: a willingness to endure long periods of hardship and wait for a technology for many years.

Consequently, USTC has become the most prominent science and innovation landmark in Hefei. According to public data from the USTC Alumni Association, as of 2025, there are 31 "USTC-affiliated" A-share listed companies founded by alumni or incubated from the university's technology transformations, with 21 of them listed after 2019. Focusing on USTC's own technology transformation system, as of the listing of Guoyi Instruments, the university has formed a portfolio of 24 existing shareholding enterprises and 92 empowered enterprises, with 7 of them listed on the A-share market. There is another highly instructive case. In the early days, USTC mainly contributed patents and proprietary technologies as equity, with the asset management company holding the corporate equity long-term. As the number of technology transformation projects grew, USTC began exploring new paths. In 2020, the university launched a reform for the empowerment of job-related scientific and technological achievements. The following year, it proposed a "empowerment + transfer + agreed-upon return" model, giving more disposal rights to the research teams, while the university retained future returns through agreements. According to reports, the number of technology transformations in the three years since the pilot reform exceeded three times the total of the previous five years.

Behind this, the greatest support naturally comes from Hefei. In 2012, Anhui Province, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei City, and USTC jointly established the Advanced Technology Research Institute. Ten years later, "USTC Silicon Valley" was born, supplemented by technology managers, industrial funds, and application scenarios. Public data shows that approximately 90% of USTC's empowerment reform projects are located in USTC Silicon Valley. It can be said that USTC provides Hefei with source innovation, while Hefei allows these technologies to leave the campus and enter the broader industrial world. Over fifty years, a university and a city have become inseparable. USTC's ideals have taken root here, and Hefei's ambitions have grown from this.

A Bumper Harvest for Universities

This is not an isolated case. In the first eight months of this year, the scene of IPO bell-ringings was vivid. Behind the most watched technology tracks 鈥?artificial intelligence, optoelectronics, and quantum technology 鈥?there are traces of university laboratories. Another notable return comes from Tsinghua University. In 1996, the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University established the Knowledge Engineering Laboratory. Over twenty years later, Tang Jie and others promoted the industrialization of research results, and Z.AI was born. In January of this year, Z.AI listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the world's first listed company with a general-purpose AI foundation model as its core business. Subsequently, its market value once exceeded HKD 1 trillion. As of the close on August 13, the total market capitalization of Z.AI was approximately HKD 613.2 billion. The prospectus disclosed that Huakong Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tsinghua University, holds 15.5344 million shares of Z.AI. Based on the closing price on that day, the value of this stake was approximately HKD 20.4 billion.

Wuhan presents another path. As early as 2012, Professor Li Jinyan of Huazhong University of Science and Technology founded Changjin Photon in Optics Valley, pushing the industrialization of specialty optical fiber technology. The prospectus shows that 7 of the company's 8 core technical personnel graduated from HUST, and 12 of its 37 invention patents were transferred from HUST. By May of this year, Changjin Photon listed on the STAR Market, closing up 1,510.52% on its debut day, with a total market value of 61.8 billion yuan. In the last equity change before the listing, Huagong Venture Capital, in which HUST holds a stake, acquired 750,000 shares at 24.34 yuan per share, also yielding handsome returns. The listing of Changjin Photon coincided with the concentrated outbreak of Wuhan's optoelectronics industry. Over more than forty years, from a single optical fiber to a complete industrial chain, Optics Valley has gradually gathered companies like Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable (YOFC), Huagong Tech, Accelink Technologies, and FiberHome. HUST provides talent and technology, while Wuhan turns these achievements into an industrial chain.

Then there is Chengdu. Earlier, companies incubated by the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), such as Chengdu Huawei, Chengdian Guangxin, and Jiacheng Technology, were listed one after another. Among them, Jiacheng Technology was founded by three UESTC teachers. In July this year, co-founder Liang Difei signed an agreement to donate 10 million shares to the university's foundation. Based on the closing price on the trading day before the signing, the market value was approximately 447 million yuan.

These scenes are the best answer to the significance of transforming university scientific and technological achievements. The journey from the laboratory to the stock exchange often takes ten years or more. It involves countless experiments, engineering, and market validation, as well as the long periods of dedicated, unglamorous work that countless researchers have endured. All the rewards seen today began with an unheralded departure long ago. Ultimately, it is time's reward for long-term perseverance.