Apple’s suppliers are racing to Hong Kong to fund their robot pivot

Two of Apple’s biggest Chinese suppliers are racing to Hong Kong in the same week. Luxshare wants about $3bn, Lingyi just banked $1.1bn. Both are using the cash to pivot from smartphone parts to AI hardware and humanoid robots.

The companies that build your AirPods are quietly raising a fortune. This week two of them went looking for it in the same place.

Luxshare Precision assembles AirPods and a growing share of iPhones. It has started gauging interest for a Hong Kong listing that may raise about $3bn, Bloomberg reported. That would rank among the city’s biggest deals this year. Days earlier, fellow Apple supplier Lingyi iTech raised HK$8.3bn ($1.1bn). It priced its shares at the very top of the range and turned away more than 100 orders.

The two deals are not a coincidence. They are the same bet, placed twice. China’s hardware supply chain is repricing itself for a new cycle, and it wants offshore capital to fund the shift.

A June rush to Hong Kong

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Hong Kong’s market for first-time share sales has been on a tear. Bloomberg Intelligence expects the city’s listing proceeds to top $43bn this year, a six-year high. June alone is set to bring the most deals of any month in 2026.

The timing is deliberate. By starting to take investor orders before the end of June, companies avoid having to refile updated financial statements. That deadline helps explain why so many names are crowding through the door at once. It is also why Luxshare moved fast.

The firm passed a listing hearing at the Hong Kong exchange on Tuesday, days after China’s securities regulator gave it the green light.

The pattern is bigger than these two. Mainland firms have been shifting to Hong Kong as the route to a New York float narrows. High-technology debutants now lead the market. The AI developer Zhipu is weighing a multibillion-dollar share sale in the city. The Apple suppliers are a different flavour of the same trade: not frontier software, but the factories that make the hardware real.

From AirPods to humanoid robots

What the money funds is the interesting part. Lingyi iTech makes components for consumer electronics, but its pitch to investors looks past the smartphone. The company plans to spend the proceeds on research, capacity and acquisitions as it pushes into AI hardware and humanoid robotics.

That push is concrete. Lingyi is building a super factory in Beijing and has told investors it is targeting 500,000 humanoid robots a year by 2030. The logic is simple. A humanoid robot needs precision motors, sensors, thermal systems and structural parts. Those are the same parts Chinese plants already churn out for phones, cars and drones.

Retooling a smartphone line for robots is an upgrade, not a reinvention. Lingyi is not the only one making the switch either. Rivals such as Lens Technology and AAC Technologies are repurposing their own precision-component plants for robotics.

Lingyi’s numbers give it room to try. Revenue rose 16% to 51.4 billion yuan ($7.6bn) in 2025. Its Shenzhen-listed shares have doubled in a year, lifting its market value to about $21bn. Controlled by founder Zeng Fangqin since 2006, the company drew nearly 300 institutional orders for its Hong Kong tranche, with cornerstone backers including the smartphone maker Honor and Sunny Optical.

The top 10 investors took more than half of the allocation, a sign of how concentrated the demand was. It debuts in the city on 26 June, the biggest maiden offering there since Victory Giant’s $3bn listing in April.

Luxshare’s moment

Luxshare is the heavier weight. Its Shenzhen shares have more than doubled over the past year, giving it a market value above $77bn. Revenue reached 332.3 billion yuan ($48.9bn) in 2025, up 24% on the year. Citic Securities, Goldman Sachs and China International Capital Corp lead the planned listing.

The company also has a story investors like. Chairwoman and chief executive Grace Wang began on a Shenzhen production line in 1988 and founded Luxshare in 2004. This month Fortune named her among the top 10 of its 2026 Most Powerful Women in Business, the only executive from China to make that tier. Earlier in the year she topped Forbes China’s list of the country’s most successful businesswomen.

Luxshare has spread well beyond Apple too. It now runs across Asia, North America and Europe, with positions in 5G infrastructure, automotive electronics and smart manufacturing. Its latest sustainability report says clean energy now covers 64% of its consumption, that absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions fell 25% against 2022, and that women hold 37.5% of board seats.

The company is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050 and earned a top CDP climate rating for a second year. For a contract manufacturer chasing Western clients and Western capital, that scorecard is part of the pitch.

The case for caution

There are reasons to keep a cool head. Both Hong Kong deals priced at steep discounts to the companies’ mainland shares, with Lingyi’s offer set nearly 50% below its Shenzhen close. Investors are clearly hungry, but they are also demanding a margin of safety.

The robot thesis is shakier still. China’s humanoid sector is crowded, and one recent survey found more than 150 firms chasing a market where only 23% of buyers say they are satisfied.

A factory that can make half a million robots is worth little if nobody wants to buy them at a profit. The supply chain has proven it can build at scale. Demand at scale is the unanswered question.

History adds a note of caution as well. China’s market regulator fined Luxshare and the chipmaker Wingtech over a deal-disclosure violation. Even the supply chain’s champions operate under tight official scrutiny.

None of that dims the appetite on display this week. So the open question is not whether China’s hardware giants can raise the money. They plainly can. It is whether the pivot from phones to robots is the next great manufacturing wave, or a very well-funded bet on a market that has yet to arrive.