AI Chip Firm's Incentive Shares Unlock, 2026 Differentiated Assessment Draft Disclosed

An artificial intelligence chip company's employee stock incentive shares will be listed for trading this week. On the eve of the incentive shares' listing, the company disclosed its 2026 equity incentive draft, adopting a tiered and differentiated assessment mechanism: for mid-level core staff and R&D personnel, the assessment focuses on revenue scale; for senior executives, profitability constraints are added to match the responsibility boundaries and performance weights of different positions.

Hard-tech companies generally have high R&D intensity, rapid technology iteration, and long unprofitable periods. Traditional equity incentive assessments based on revenue and net profit are difficult to adapt to the development reality of science and technology enterprises. Under the registration-based IPO system, the STAR Market and ChiNext provide greater institutional flexibility for equity incentive assessments of tech companies, supporting companies to design plans based on their own business stages. Differentiated incentives have become the choice of an increasing number of listed companies.

In practice, many listed companies have introduced diversified non-financial assessment indicators in their equity incentive plans. Some companies set dual assessment dimensions such as revenue growth rate and market revenue growth rate for industrial control power categories. In addition to company and individual performance assessments, they also add a company profitability guarantee coefficient. Some companies focus on new businesses, selecting indicators such as the proportion of new business revenue, the number of invention patents in new businesses, and the intensity and growth rate of R&D investment as assessment criteria.

The differentiated assessment model also places new demands on corporate governance. When using equity incentive tools, science and technology enterprises need to ensure clear assessment standards and quantifiable and verifiable indicators to guarantee the standardization and effectiveness of the system design.