Chengdu Satellite Maker Clears HK Listing Hurdle on Third Try
GalaxySpace's RMB 3.5 billion pre-IPO round and 114-satellite backlog signal ambition; widening losses and long receivables cycle test investor conviction
Chengdu-based National Star Aerospace Technology cleared Hong Kong's main board listing hearing on October 29, 2026, clearing the final regulatory gate on its third attempt after 21 months of filings — positioning it to become the first Hong Kong-listed company whose core business is on-orbit AI computing.
The hearing approval, disclosed via the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's HKEXnews filing system with China International Capital Corporation as sole sponsor, arrives after two prior applications lapsed in January and August 2025. The company's post-hearing prospectus reveals a business in structural transition: satellite revenue as a share of total sales surged from 0.6% in 2023 to 57.7% in the first half of 2026, yet cumulative net losses since 2023 have exceeded RMB 570 million (US$79.2 million), and trade receivables aged beyond two years stood at RMB 284 million (US$39.4 million) at end-2025.
Hong Kong equity markets, navigating a selective appetite for pre-profit technology issuers in 2026, will now price a company whose RMB 11.554 billion (US$1.60 billion) post-money valuation from its April 2026 Pre-IPO round implies a 15x-plus revenue multiple on 2025 sales of RMB 703 million (US$97.6 million) — a premium that rests almost entirely on the execution of a 2,800-satellite AI computing constellation still in early deployment.
Three Filings Reveal a Business Rewriting Its Own Story
GalaxySpace's protracted path to listing is itself a data point. Founded in Chengdu in May 2018 by Lu Chuan, a former associate research fellow and postgraduate supervisor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China with nearly two decades of cross-disciplinary AI and aerospace engineering work, the company closed a RMB 25 million (US$3.5 million) angel round within six months of incorporation, backed by Shenzhen Capital Group and a UESTC-affiliated fund.
The cadence of subsequent rounds — roughly one per year — accelerated sharply ahead of the third filing. A RMB 520 million (US$72.2 million) Series D in 2023 was led by Hongtai Capital; the April 2026 Pre-IPO round of RMB 3.55 billion (US$493 million) lifted the post-money valuation to RMB 11.554 billion. By public disclosures, the company has completed at least eight financing rounds since inception.
The repeated need to refresh financial materials is not merely procedural. Each lapse forced GalaxySpace to submit updated accounts at a moment when its revenue mix was changing at an unusually rapid pace. A business where the dominant revenue line shifts by more than 50 percentage points in three years cannot present a static investment case; the story and the ledger both require recalibration with every new filing cycle. That dynamic also explains why the third application, submitted on May 14, 2026, cleared in approximately six months — the numbers had finally stabilized enough to present a coherent, if still loss-making, trajectory.
Lu Chuan retains control through two employee shareholding platforms, Beijing Xingrong Aerospace and Beijing Xinshidai Space, giving him 30.77% of voting rights as the single largest shareholder bloc. Hongtai Capital founder Sheng Xitai holds approximately 7.93% in aggregate across multiple funds, Starriver Industry Group holds about 5.41%, and Shenzhen Capital Group remains on the cap table. Eight Sichuan-based government-linked vehicles — including Guanghan Guangxin Investment, Chengdu Jiaozi Venture Capital, and Chengdu Dongjin Industry Fund — collectively hold approximately 3.59%, a signal of sustained local government alignment that matters for securing domestic satellite procurement contracts.
Revenue Climbs, But Gross Margin Volatility Flags Execution Risk
GalaxySpace operates across two segments: satellite and related services and space-based solutions, the latter encompassing spatial intelligence and computing services — marketed under the "Lingjing Engine" platform — applied to digital city management, cultural tourism, and gaming verticals.
Top-line revenue grew from RMB 508 million (US$70.6 million) in 2023 to RMB 703 million (US$97.6 million) in 2025, a compound annual growth rate of approximately 17.6%. The problem is margin behaviour. Gross margin moved along a volatile arc — 14.0% in 2023, 38.0% in 2024, 20.4% in 2025 — a 17.6-percentage-point decline in a single year that is difficult to attribute to a single cause without granular segment disclosure.
The first-half 2026 data offers partial reassurance: overall gross margin recovered to 39.3%, with the satellite segment alone reaching 53.3%. Operating cash flow turned positive, and adjusted net loss narrowed from RMB 144 million (US$20 million) in the same period of the prior year to RMB 65 million (US$9 million). Net loss for the period still reached RMB 151 million (US$21 million), and the trajectory of research and development spending — rising from RMB 53.5 million (US$7.4 million) in 2023 to RMB 152 million (US$21.1 million) in 2025 — reflects deliberate investment in satellite intelligence payloads rather than cost drift.
The receivables picture warrants closer scrutiny from prospective investors. Trade receivables and notes represented 24.3% of total assets at end-2025, with RMB 284 million aged beyond two years. The structural cause is not unusual: space-based solutions customers are predominantly government agencies and state-linked enterprises with extended payment cycles, while satellite business revenue recognition is tied to on-orbit delivery milestones rather than contract signature. The 114-satellite order backlog, with a total contract value of RMB 3.475 billion (US$482.6 million) — implying an average unit price of approximately RMB 30 million (US$4.2 million) per satellite — represents future delivery commitments, not current cash.
"Star Computing" Ambition Advances, But Commercial Model Lacks Full Disclosure
GalaxySpace's equity-market narrative rests on its "Star Computing Plan": a 2,800-satellite AI computing constellation branded as a space-based compute network. The company holds International Telecommunication Union (ITU) frequency coordination approvals for 3,156 satellites and plans to launch an initial 100 satellites before 2028.
Recent milestones provide technical credibility. On October 14, 2026, the second cluster of eight AI computing satellites reached orbit. A fourth-quarter 2026 launch campaign targeting at least 14 additional satellites is planned. The company has confirmed on-orbit deployment of Alibaba Cloud's Tongyi Qianwen large language model on its satellite infrastructure, and has validated ground-based robotics accessing orbital computing capacity — a tangible proof-of-concept for the distributed AI compute thesis.
The commercially critical question the prospectus leaves partially unanswered is the revenue model granularity. Of the 114 satellites on order, the filing does not disaggregate how many carry AI computing payloads versus standard earth observation or communication configurations, nor does it specify whether revenue from these satellites will be recognized as lump-sum hardware sales or recurring compute-usage fees. That distinction matters enormously for valuation: a hardware-sale model produces episodic, project-driven revenue; a compute-usage model, once scaled, produces the kind of recurring, predictable cash flow that justifies technology-sector multiples.
Hong Kong's market will price GalaxySpace on the former until the latter becomes demonstrable. The inflection point to watch is not the IPO pricing date, but the first quarter in which customers begin paying for computing capacity consumed rather than satellites delivered — the transition from project revenue to recurring infrastructure revenue that separates a satellite manufacturer from a space computing platform.
Valuation Map: GalaxySpace Sits Mid-Tier in a Rapidly Stratifying Sector
Placing the RMB 11.554 billion (US$1.60 billion) post-money valuation in competitive context, the gap to global benchmarks is stark. SpaceX, which listed on Nasdaq in June 2026 targeting a valuation of approximately US$1.75 trillion with a US$75 billion fundraise, reported Starlink revenue of US$11.4 billion in 2025 — a scale that makes direct comparison structurally misleading rather than analytically useful.
Within China's domestic commercial space sector, the valuation hierarchy at the most recent funding rounds places Galaxy Space above RMB 30 billion (US$4.2 billion), Tianbing Technology at approximately RMB 22.5 billion (US$3.1 billion), Interstellar Glory near RMB 16 billion (US$2.2 billion), and CAS Space at approximately RMB 15 billion (US$2.1 billion). GalaxySpace's RMB 11.554 billion roughly corresponds to its reported 2.1% share of China's private commercial aerospace satellite-related services market in 2025 — a mid-tier position with commensurately mid-tier pricing power.
The A-share market presents a parallel, slower track. Following the Shanghai Stock Exchange's late-2025 issuance of STAR Market Tier-5 listing guidelines for commercial rocket companies — which allow loss-making issuers with proven technology to apply — Blue Arrow Aerospace became the first commercial aerospace company to receive formal acceptance under the new rules. CAS Space and MinoSpace have entered the STAR Market review or inquiry phase. Crucially, however, regulatory focus has already shifted from "launch track record" to "commercial closure": examiners are pressing for evidence that reusable launch vehicle economics can compress per-kilogram costs sufficiently, and that a credible path to profitability exists within two to three years. No privately held satellite manufacturer focused primarily on whole-satellite production has yet completed an A-share listing, leaving GalaxySpace's Hong Kong route as the first mover in that specific configuration.
Sector-level tailwinds remain directionally unambiguous. Industry forecasters project a compound annual growth rate exceeding 40% for satellite sector revenues between 2025 and 2030 globally, while the space-based computing market is projected to expand from approximately US$300 million in 2020 to approximately US$16 billion by 2030. China's domestic low-earth-orbit constellations, including the state-backed Qianfan programme, remain orders of magnitude smaller than SpaceX's Starlink in deployed satellite count, sustaining genuine demand for rapid network build-out.
The gap between "sector has room to grow" and "this company will capture margin from that growth" is bridged, in GalaxySpace's case, by reusable launch cost economics it does not control, launch slot scheduling at third-party facilities, and the speed at which paying customers migrate from government procurement to private commercial contracts. The listing hearing is a capital market milestone. The commercial closure has not yet been reached.
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