SMIC went from a company on paper to a working chip factory in Shanghai in about three years. Richard Chang, a veteran of Taiwan's chip industry, founded it in April 2000. It built wafer plants in the Zhangjiang High-Tech Park and made chips that other companies designed. By early 2004 it offered copper wiring, a leading-edge process. When it filed to sell shares in New York and Hong Kong, it asked investors to back a chipmaker not yet four years old.

Other People's Designs

SMIC is a foundry. It does not sell chips under its own name. Chip designers send it their plans, and SMIC turns them into finished silicon wafers. Chang set up the company in the Cayman Islands in April 2000. He raised money from venture investors and others to pay for its plants. The company ran all of its fabs from one headquarters in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai.

Two Listings, Then One

SMIC priced its offering in March 2004 at $17.50 per American depositary share. Each ADS stood for 50 ordinary shares. The stock listed in New York and Hong Kong at the same time. The start was rough: the shares fell more than 10 percent from their opening price as investors worried about spending and a trade fight over chip taxes. SMIC pulled its shares from the NYSE in 2019. In 2020 it added a listing on Shanghai's STAR Market, and it still trades in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Cover: The Little Forge, Donald Shaw MacLaughlan. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a forge (a chip foundry).