There are entrepreneurs who build one company around one idea, and then there are people like Dr. Ko-Cheng Fang, whose career reads more like a list of separate careers stitched together: cybersecurity, materials science, gemology, biotechnology, painting, and now, photonic quantum computing. Fang is the founder, CEO, and Chairman of LongServing Technology, a company he started in Taipei in 2010, and over the past year the business has moved from a relatively low-profile Taiwanese R&D outfit to a company reportedly pricing a new financing round at a $2.5 billion valuation.
That jump has put a spotlight on both the company and the man behind it.
From Cybersecurity to Chips
Fang’s earlier work sits far from the world of chips and light. According to LongServing, some of his first patented technologies involved cloud storage systems and programmable password locks, innovations the company says were later adopted by the United States Department of Homeland Security for information security and cloud computing applications. It’s an origin story that doesn’t obviously lead to quantum photonics, but Fang has described his various fields of work as different expressions of the same underlying interest: finding better substrates for storing and moving information.
That interest eventually turned toward photonics. LongServing holds patents across 26 countries covering a photonic chip architecture that the company says can significantly cut energy consumption, reduce carbon emissions, resist electromagnetic interference, and outperform current semiconductor-based chips on raw computing speed, with LongServing citing figures as high as 1,000 times faster in some comparisons. These are bold claims, and ones that, at this stage, come primarily from the company itself rather than independent third-party benchmarking, so they’re worth treating as LongServing’s own projections rather than settled fact.
X-Photon and the Push Toward Photonic Memory
In 2025, Fang announced what LongServing calls X-Photon, a proprietary photonic quantum material the company says is capable of emitting light at an ultra-short wavelength of around two nanometres. LongServing positions X-Photon as a foundational material for nanoscale photonic pathways and photonic transistors, and ultimately, future generations of photonic quantum chips. The company describes it as one of its most significant scientific achievements to date.
Building on that, LongServing has also been developing photonic memory, designed to work alongside its photonic processors. The idea, as Fang explains it, is to remove the repeated conversion between light and electrical signals that happens constantly inside conventional computing hardware. “We are not attempting to make the transistor faster,” he said in a recent interview. “We are attempting to make it unnecessary.” Whether that ambition holds up at commercial scale remains to be seen, but it captures the scope of what Fang is aiming for: not an incremental upgrade to existing chip technology, but a different foundation altogether.
A Parallel Life in Jade and Art
Alongside the chip work, Fang has spent years on a project that has little to do with computing at all: laboratory-grown jadeite. He is credited as the inventor of the first man-made synthetic “icy” jadeite, a gem-grade material developed by combining crystal growth engineering with materials science, aimed at the high-end jewellery market. LongServing frames this as an example of sustainable innovation, offering a lab-grown alternative to a resource that is otherwise mined and increasingly scarce.
Fang is also a painter, and one of his works was reportedly displayed on a digital screen in Times Square earlier this year. It’s an unusual detail to include in a scientist’s biography, but it fits the pattern that runs through his career: an unwillingness to stay inside one discipline. Company materials go as far as comparing his range of work to Leonardo da Vinci, a comparison that says as much about how LongServing wants Fang to be perceived as it does about the work itself.
Biotechnology and Cancer Research
More recently, Fang’s ambitions have extended into biotechnology, including research the company says is aimed at cancer treatment, alongside plant-extract-based biotechnology intended to support the human immune system. Details on the stage and scientific validation of this research are limited in public materials, and as with the photonic chip performance claims, this is an area where independent verification would be needed before drawing firm conclusions about efficacy.
A $500 Million Round at a $2.5 Billion Valuation
The clearest sign that LongServing has entered a new phase came with news that the company opened a $500 million financing round priced at a $2.5 billion valuation. Fang has said the capital will be allocated across four areas: continued photonic computing research, scaling the company’s materials science division, expanding its biotechnology work, and building out international patent infrastructure. LongServing has also stated it is in pre-IPO preparation and has invited financial management and advisory firms with underwriting experience to make contact regarding potential collaboration.
A Career Built on Range, Not Narrowness
What makes Fang an unusual figure isn’t any single invention, it’s the range. Few founders move comfortably between semiconductor patents, gemstone synthesis, immune-system biotechnology, and gallery-displayed paintings, let alone claim meaningful progress in all of them at once. Whether LongServing’s photonic chip technology ultimately delivers on its performance claims, and whether its biotechnology research produces clinically meaningful results, are questions that will play out over the coming years, likely alongside continued scrutiny given the scale of the valuation now attached to the company.
For now, Fang’s own framing of his work, treating invention as a responsibility rather than a product line, offers the clearest thread connecting a career that, on paper, shouldn’t hang together as neatly as it does.
Website: https://triton.url.com.tw/
Instagram: @ko_cheng_fang
