In the summer of 2018, Tesla Model 3 became the first vehicle to adopt silicon carbide (SiC) power devices in its main drive inverter. Like a boulder dropped into a lake, this move sent ripples across the new energy vehicle industry chain — silicon carbide, known as a groundbreaking third-generation semiconductor material, began to shine.

A butterfly flapped its wings. At that time, Shi Jingkui, then an executive at a Fortune Global 500 company, sensed that a core revolution in energy conversion efficiency was underway. The following year, Zizhan Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (“Zizhan Technology”) was quietly founded. Its founding team consisted of 15 PhDs from top universities worldwide, with an average of more than ten years of R&D experience at Fortune 500 companies. Technology was the solid foundation for this “top academic team.”

Choosing silicon carbide was no accident.

In the inverter, the core power component of the Model 3, Tesla replaced traditional silicon materials with silicon carbide modules. At the same power level, SiC modules feature a smaller package size, 75% lower switching loss, and approximately 5% higher system efficiency, breaking through multiple long-standing industry performance bottlenecks. Meanwhile, Zizhan Technology’s core team had already worked extensively in the silicon carbide field. “With a clear technical path and an incoming commercial wave, we entered the silicon carbide track without hesitation,” said Shi Jingkui.

With excellent heat resistance, voltage resistance, and extremely low conduction loss, silicon carbide devices naturally align with the new energy vehicle industry’s demands for high efficiency, low cost, and compact size. Since its establishment, new energy vehicles have been Zizhan Technology’s main battlefield. In the fast-changing NEV industry, “speed” is the law of survival, but Shi Jingkui believes: “Only by staying slightly ahead can you seize better market opportunities.”

In the early days of the industry, new energy vehicles were mocked for drastically reduced range in winter. “Range anxiety” hindered market expansion. “Thermal management systems account for 21%–37% of battery energy consumption. Was there a technical solution to improve their efficiency?”

In 2021, Zizhan Technology took the lead in applying silicon carbide technology to NEV thermal management, boosting the overall efficiency of automotive compressors by 10%. This move not only earned Zizhan its crucial “first pot of gold” but also led industry technology trends, with mid-to-high-end domestic vehicle brands quickly adopting this solution.

The team did not stop there. They then innovatively deeply integrated the compressor and heater in the thermal management system. The “two-in-one” solution saved 400–500 yuan per vehicle and rapidly became a mainstream industry technical route.

Furthermore, without affecting end-market prices, Zizhan Technology achieved industrial mass production of China’s first 1200V silicon carbide intelligent power module (IPM), building vertical integration capabilities from chip-level modules to complete systems.

These three precisely timed “steps ahead” have successively placed Zizhan Technology at the top of the market share for silicon carbide solutions in thermal management air compressor controllers.

Notably, Zizhan Technology once again demonstrated its technical penetration in the intelligent chassis sector, which has extremely high technical barriers. Leveraging the high efficiency and small size of silicon carbide devices, the team successfully developed an intelligent suspension electronic control system that operates stably with natural cooling alone, without forced air or water cooling.

“Very few domestic companies have the R&D capability for fully active hydraulic suspensions. We have reduced the total cost from over 10,000 yuan to several thousand yuan, bringing this once luxury-only feature to mainstream-priced vehicles,” introduced Shi Jingkui. The company’s intelligent chassis – suspension pump controller product has entered the C-sample stage, with nearly 1,000 vehicle road tests completed. The team will soon conduct extreme-condition verification in Heihe, Mohe, and other regions, planning mass delivery in 2026 and large-scale volume from 2027 onward.

In his view, the NEV model development cycle has shrunk sharply from years in the fuel vehicle era to months today, meaning shorter market opportunity windows and extreme requirements for supply chain agility and stable delivery capabilities of innovative companies. To this end, Zizhan Technology has established a clear internal product evolution roadmap, proactively planning technical iteration paths and platform architecture design for future products. The goal is to lead proactively rather than respond passively to customer needs, deeply integrating innovation vitality with systematic efficiency.

“Team evolution has no other way but to ‘hit the wall,’” Shi Jingkui recalled with emotion. “After hitting enough walls, genuine entrepreneurial methodologies and higher decision-making success rates emerge.”

Beneath the glamorous halo of this “top academic team” lay inherent cognitive “blind spots.” “From childhood to adulthood, we were insensitive to ‘money’ — including how to use it to allocate resources and leverage strengths. For an enterprise, however, capital is the lifeblood,” he stated frankly. Scientists often focus intensely on technological advancement but can easily “live in their own world,” falling into technological idealism and ignoring real customer demands and a complete commercial closed loop.

In 2023, Zizhan Technology paid a heavy “tuition fee.” The team devoted all efforts to developing a liquid-cooled super charging and storage power supply, pursuing ultimate performance and reliability technically, but failed to fully consider the market’s sensitivity to cost. The product, which cost 30 million yuan to develop, ultimately received a far weaker market response than expected.

Fortunately, continuous learning and in-depth review are what top academics excel at. “An enterprise must possess core technology, but must never take technology as the sole core,” summarized Shi Jingkui. “It took us a long time to truly understand: all technology will eventually become outdated; the only constant is the deep connection between technology and demand. The core proposition of entrepreneurship is how to make technology create tangible value for customers and make them willing to pay for it.”

Bouncing back quickly after setbacks and maintaining continuous self-reflection has become a valuable organizational habit at Zizhan Technology. “The more you summarize, the more you find that paths to success may vary widely, but failure patterns are often limited,” said Shi Jingkui. In key decisions such as product definition, project management, mass production processes, and iteration paths, the team continuously calibrates that invisible “pulse.” This ability to learn quickly and iterate agilely in practice is now regarded as one of the company’s core competencies.

With silicon carbide as its technical foundation, Zizhan Technology is expanding its platform capabilities to broader fields. Among many cutting-edge directions, energy storage and AI computing centers are seen as strategic blue oceans with the greatest potential.

It is understood that for computing centers powering the AI revolution, power consumption has become a critical operational factor and a huge cost black hole. Building high-efficiency, high-power-density high-voltage power supply systems has evolved from a technical trend into an industrial imperative — and this is exactly where silicon carbide excels. It can significantly reduce energy conversion losses, save huge electricity costs, and greatly relieve heat dissipation pressure. Targeting this opportunity, Zizhan Technology has focused on layout in areas such as 800V computing center power architectures.

The rapid penetration of silicon carbide into diverse application scenarios, each with vastly different technical requirements, iteration rhythms, and commercial logics, has pulled Zizhan Technology into a more complex and longer-term comprehensive competition. Shi Jingkui noted: “Current industrialization challenges for silicon carbide are clear — costs remain relatively high, reliability needs continuous improvement, and products require constant refinement.”

The core path for silicon carbide cost reduction lies in expanding substrate size, increasing crystal growth speed, and improving production yield. Industry data shows that when the substrate wafer size increases from 6 inches to 8 inches, the per-batch chip output rises from 448 to 845 units, while edge loss rate drops from 14% to 7%, greatly improving wafer utilization. The industry widely believes that 2026 may become an important milestone for 8-inch substrate release, driving a significant drop in silicon carbide costs.

Mu Min, General Manager of Investment Department II of Nanjing Venture Capital Group, stated that the “cost model” should not be merely about price adjustments, but a process of systematic engineering optimization. The silicon carbide downstream market has extremely high demand for standardized, modular, high-performance, and cost-effective power modules. Zizhan Technology is a rare domestic investment target with independent silicon carbide power module R&D capabilities, achieving extreme innovation in cost modeling, electromagnetism, heat dissipation, and flexibility, and building technical barriers in substrates, sintering, electromagnetic compatibility, system optimization, and other aspects.

“The company name ‘Zizhan’ means ultimate foresight. We hope to penetrate superficial glitz and understand the world from the ‘first principles’ and physical essence of things,” said Shi Jingkui. This is Zizhan Technology’s firm anchor in an era of turbulence: adhering to unchanging fundamentals amid change, and grasping underlying logic amid complexity.

Perhaps it is this pragmatic vision rooted in scientific spirit that allows Zizhan Technology to stay clear-headed amid industrial booms, find its way through technological mazes, and hear the echo of things’ essence before every major decision.