Recently, the prices of storage chips have been continuously rising.
Currently, the pressure of price increases is being transmitted from upstream to downstream. The CEO of SMIC recently stated at a performance briefing:“Due to the shortage of storage chip supply and rising prices, industries such as mobile phones and network communication equipment are being cautious in their procurement.”
In addition, the president of semiconductor distributor Fusion Worldwide revealed in an interview that the delivery price of 32GB DDR5 server memory modules scheduled for November has skyrocketed from $149 in September to $239, an increase of 60%.
This round of storage price increases is different from the past. Storage chip giants Samsung and SK Hynix are cautiously expanding production after learning from the industry’s downturn in previous years, prioritizing the allocation of limited wafer capacity to more profitable server HBM and DDR5.
In the context of supply-demand imbalance, overseas storage manufacturers are making substantial profits. However, with the advancement of domestic storage chip technology, domestic manufacturers are also expected to have a seat at the table.
Amid this storage price increase “frenzy,” a domestic semiconductor company in Hunan, Guoke Micro, is quietly entering the storage chip market.
What is the “confidence” of Guoke Micro in entering the storage chip market at this critical moment? What technologies do they possess that allow them to “snatch food from the tiger’s mouth” among overseas manufacturers?
Today, let’s have a good discussion.
The story of Guoke Micro begins in 2008, when the company was established in Changsha, Hunan; in 2011, the company developed the first domestic MPEG2 decoding chip GK6105S that supports DNS advanced security encryption.
In 2012, the company became the first integrated circuit design enterprise recognized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in Hunan Province; in 2015, the company entered the video coding field and launched the GK710X series of surveillance chips.
In 2016, the company released the high-end solid-state storage controller chip GK2101; in the same year, in November, the company launched the fully self-developed standard live satellite HD chip GK6202S; in 2020, the company continued to launch the next generation of solid-state drive controllers GK2302V200 series.
As video technology has evolved from HD to ultra HD 4K/8K, the company has seized the opportunity. In 2021, CCTV achieved the world’s first 8K ultra HD television live broadcast and 8K television broadcast under 5G networks. In 2022, the company’s 8K ultra HD video decoding chip served the Winter Olympics.
However, the good times did not last long. In 2024, the company experienced a cliff-like decline in performance, with revenue dropping significantly by 53.26%, and revenue continued to decline by 2.5% in the first three quarters of this year.
Nevertheless, the company continues to insist on independent innovation and maintain high R&D investment.
From 2022 to 2024, Guoke Micro’s R&D expenses reached 480 million, 526 million, and 522 million yuan, and in the first three quarters of 2025, R&D expenses reached 388 million yuan, accounting for 33.1% of the revenue during the same period.
The company’s continuous high R&D investment is aimed at nurturing its capabilities and seeking new growth points, with a focus on storage chips.
In the storage chip field, the company focuses on solid-state drive controller chips, mainly used in solid-state storage drives (SSD), including PC hard drives and laptop hard drives.
According to data from the Chinese flash memory market, in recent years, the global SSD chip market has been steadily growing, with demand in China growing even faster.
However, overseas manufacturers from South Korea and Europe and the United States, leveraging their first-mover advantage, occupy the major global storage chip market.
With the rapid development of AI, data security has become increasingly important, and the demand for domestic storage chips has become urgent.
In 2023, with the clear standards for domestic computer procurement, the demand for domestic innovation is rapidly increasing. According to research by the First New Voice, the scale of China’s domestic innovation market is expected to reach 2.66 trillion yuan by 2026.
The growth of the domestic innovation scale will further drive the demand for domestic storage controller chips.
On November 19, Guoke Micro stated in a survey that the company has completed a dual business layout of “solid-state drive controller chips + industry solid-state drive products” in the solid-state storage field. The self-developed solid-state storage controller chip, equipped with domestic embedded CPU IP cores, has passed both national secret and national measurement certifications, and can achieve a fully domestic supply chain delivery.
In 2025, the company’s solid-state storage series products saw growth, with revenue in the first half reaching 18.8851 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 33.19%, but currently, the solid-state storage business only accounts for 2.55% of revenue, having a limited impact on overall revenue.
Secondly, the company is focusing on the “ALL IN AI” strategy, moving towards AI chip development.
For example, in the area of AI SoC chips, the company is focusing on AI edge computing AI SoC development based on its self-developed MLPU technology, empowering intelligent terminal applications with large models.
The AI SoC series products include 8TOPS low-power AIoT terminal chips, 16TOPS edge computing chips, and in the pre-research stage, there are 64TOPS-128TOPS high-performance chips, forming a product layout from low to high, mainly applied in AIoT smart terminals, AIPC, industrial computing, robotics, and other scenarios.
In the area of AI vision, the company has launched a new generation of AI image processing engine (AI ISP) brand—Yuan Owl. Relying on the Yuan Owl AI ISP technology base, the company has successfully created two 4KAI vision chips:
Targeting the high-end market, the GK7606V1 series has been applied in leading companies in the security industry, adopting a dual-core A55 architecture, with a maximum 2.5T computing power NPU.
Meanwhile, the more accessible GK7206V1 series adopts a low-power design, integrating 1.0T@INT8 NPU, with outstanding black light full-color effects, leading among similar products.
In the area of automotive AI chips, the company plans to launch a new generation of automotive AI chips that meet AEC-Q100 Grade 2 standards in the first half of 2025, aiming to form a full range of automotive AI chips with computing power from low to high within three years, ranging from 2 million to 8 million.
Next is the IoT chips, which are currently a new growth point for the company.
With the integration and development of new generation information technologies such as 5G, IoT, and artificial intelligence, the IoT chip market is steadily growing.
In the IoT chip field, the company first laid out positioning and navigation chips, with its satellite positioning chips mainly including the GK95 and GK97 series.
By 2023, the company gradually expanded into the wireless LAN chip field. Currently, the company has developed and completed debugging of Wi-Fi6 2T2R wireless network card chips, which are being introduced to mainstream television and operator solution manufacturers and network card manufacturers in China, with some customers achieving small batch trial production.
Based on Wi-Fi6 2T2R, the company’s Wi-Fi6 1T1R+ Bluetooth Combo chip is undergoing back-end debugging, expected to be introduced to customers in the fourth quarter of 2025. At the same time, the company is conducting pre-research on Wi-Fi7 chips.
From an industry perspective, the Wi-Fi chip market is experiencing stable growth.
According to a report by Fundamental Business Insights, the Wi-Fi chip market size is expected to reach $34.5 billion by 2033, with a projected compound annual growth rate of over 4.4%.
In the first half of 2025, the company’s IoT series chip revenue grew by 251.37% year-on-year, with a gross margin of 41.07%, making it one of the few growth points in the company’s business.
However, the company also faces some risks.
First, in 2024, the company is highly dependent on major customers, with revenue from the top five customers accounting for 85.87%, which will test the stability of orders; secondly, the company’s high R&D investment, but the technology still lags behind industry giants. If it cannot be effectively converted into revenue, it will put pressure on performance.
Overall, Guoke Micro has successfully seized the domestic substitution “tailwind” of storage chips and AI chips, facing a rare opportunity. However, whether it can successfully break through in the future remains to be seen in the market.