Why is capital willing to wait ten years for chips, but not ten years for industrial software?

Why can Hefei spend ten years waiting for a chip company to grow?
Why did 24.8 billion yuan in investment ultimately produce a company valued at 3 trillion?
But when it comes to industrial software, many investors may not even wait three years.
Behind this lies a very deep problem in Chinese manufacturing.

First, look at a counterintuitive phenomenon.

Over the past few decades, Chinese manufacturing has created the world's largest industrial scale.
We built the most factories.
We bought the most equipment.
We trained the most engineers.
But a strange phenomenon has emerged:

Chinese manufacturing is getting stronger and stronger.Yet industrial software has not grown in step.

Why?
Because what we accumulated in the past was "industrial assets."
Factory buildings.
Equipment.
Production lines.
Capacity.
These things are visible and tangible.
Capital knows what they are worth.
But what industrial software accumulates is a different kind of asset:

Industrial knowledge.It cannot be seen.It cannot be touched.It is even hard to value.

For example, a machine runs for ten years.
How many failure patterns are hidden inside it?
How much process experience?
How many engineers' judgments?
If these things are not recorded in software,
then after the equipment shuts down, the experience may disappear along with the master technician.
This is actually the greatest waste in manufacturing.

01Why Did Siemens, Dassault, and PTC Become Industrial Giants?

Why can companies like Siemens, Dassault, and PTC become industrial giants?
Many people believe it is because their software technology is advanced.
But the deeper reason is:

They spent decades turning experience from the industrial world into digital assets.Turning knowledge in engineers' heads into models in software.Turning problems that occurred in the past into the basis for future decisions.

And what is the biggest shortcoming of China's industrial software?
It is not a lack of development capability.
But rather:

The manufacturing experience of our past decades has not been systematically deposited.

02Why Is Industrial Software So Hard to Fund with Patient Capital?

This is also why industrial software struggles to attract patient capital.
Because capital likes to see growth curves.
Likes to see user numbers.
Likes to see revenue scale.
But the true value of industrial software has a very long lag period.

In the first year, you may only be collecting data.
In the third year, you begin to form models.
In the fifth year, you truly begin to understand an industry.
In the tenth year, you form an industrial knowledge system that others cannot replicate.

So industrial software is not an ordinary software business.
It is more like building the "infrastructure" of manufacturing.

It is like building a highway.The initial investment is enormous.For years, even over a decade, there may be no obvious return.But once the network is formed, value is continuously released.

03The Biggest Lesson ChangXin Memory Technologies Offers Industrial Software

The biggest lesson ChangXin Memory Technologies offers industrial software is not that domestic substitution can succeed.
Rather, it tells us:

Truly important industrial capabilities all require long-termism.Chips need it.Industrial software needs it just as much.

In the future, the real competition in Chinese manufacturing is not just about who owns more factories.
It is about who can deposit the experience, data, and knowledge from these factories into their own industrial intelligence.
Because the most valuable enterprises in the future may not own the most equipment.

They will own the most industrial knowledge.