SMIC’s latest documents reveal: Liang Mengsong remains co-CEO and received share awards

Liang Mengsong rarely makes public appearances, and SMIC’s latest documents reveal his movements.

Liang Mengsong, who once served as TSMC's R&D general and later defected to China's SMIC, has not appeared on the attendance list of SMIC's public earnings meeting for more than four years, attracting outside attention to his movements. The latest documents show that Liang Mengsong still serves as co-CEO and was awarded 80,181 restricted stock units (RSUs) in April this year, showing that although he has faded out of the public sphere, he is still a core figure in SMIC's advancement of advanced manufacturing processes. However, the latest article in "TIME" also points out the cruel reality of SMIC's pursuit of advanced processes. The technology is still far behind TSMC. Without access to advanced equipment, not only is the cost higher, but the yield rate also faces challenges.

Liang Mengsong defected to China in 2017 and joined SMIC as co-CEO. He is regarded as an important figure in SMIC's advancement of advanced manufacturing processes. At the end of 2020, SMIC announced that Jiang Shangyi would return as vice chairman. Liang Mengsong once offered to resign, which attracted market attention, but did not leave SMIC in the end; in November 2021, he resigned as SMIC's executive director, but continued to serve as co-CEO.

Liang Mengsong has since gradually faded out of SMIC’s public performance activities. On May 13, 2022, SMIC held a first-quarter performance briefing. The official "Investor Relations Activity Record Form" still listed Liang Mengsong, Chairman Gao Yonggang, Co-CEO Zhao Haijun and others on the attendance list.

But by the second-quarter performance briefing in August of the same year, Liang Mengsong no longer appeared on the list of senior executives. Since then, SMIC’s public performance briefings have mainly been attended by senior executives such as Zhao Haijun, Guo Guangli and Wu Junfeng. Even at the latest second-quarter performance briefing in August 2026, Liang Mengsong was still not on the list of attendees.

As early as May 2023, when the technology media DIGITIMES reported on the development of SMIC’s advanced manufacturing process, it noticed that Liang Mengsong had not appeared in public for a long time.

However, SMIC’s latest documents reveal Liang Mengsong’s movements. In the 2026 semi-annual report, he will still serve as joint CEO with Zhao Haijun. As of the end of June this year, Liang Mengsong held a total of approximately 1.36 million shares of common stock, stock options and restricted stock units, accounting for approximately 0.016% of the company’s issued share capital.

On April 1 this year, SMIC granted Liang Mengsong 80,181 restricted stock units. The relevant shares will be obtained in batches until 2028 at the longest.

It is worth noting that although Liang Mengsong has rarely appeared in public for a long time, when "TIME" announced the "TIME100 AI" top 100 influential people in 2026 on August 27, he was still included in the "Leaders" category and his identity was marked as the co-CEO of SMIC.

The "Time Magazine" profile mentioned that under U.S. export controls, SMIC was unable to obtain the most advanced equipment and continued to use older equipment to advance the process. Liang Mengsong participated in leading the development of related technologies. TIME also mentioned SMIC’s N+3 process, Huawei’s Kirin 9030 and Ascend 950PR AI accelerators.

However, Time Magazine also pointed out that the transistor density of SMIC N+3 still lags behind that of TSMC and Samsung, and the continued shrinkage of older equipment also faces cost and yield challenges.