Against the backdrop of intensified global competition and increasingly severe constraints on key core technologies, how to achieve breakthroughs in bottleneck technologies has become a key focus of national strategic attention. Using data from China’s A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2024, this paper constructs a dynamic indicator of breakthroughs in technological bottlenecks to systematically evaluate the impact of patient capital on corporate technological breakthroughs.

The results show that patient capital significantly enhances corporate capability to achieve such breakthroughs. Mechanism testing suggests that this effect operates through three channels: strategic guidance, risk tolerance, and governance optimization. Specifically, it guides firms to optimize their strategic layout and strengthens supply chain collaboration; it enhances tolerance for innovation failures and improves the sustainability of R&D resource allocation; it also curbs managerial myopia and improves information transparency. To address endogeneity concerns, this paper exploits the establishment of the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund as a quasi-natural experiment and complements this with an instrumental variable approach. Both strategies yield consistent evidence of a causal effect. Further analysis shows that the effect is stronger for firms in earlier life-cycle stages, in settings with more strategically oriented capital, and in high-technology industries.

This paper contributes to the literature in three respects: First, it develops an integrated “attributes–mechanisms–outcomes” framework that highlights how the multidimensional nature of patient capital shapes breakthroughs in technological bottlenecks. Second, it proposes a dynamic measurement approach that tracks technological bottlenecks by combining evolving national strategic priorities with changes in external technology controls. Third, it provides causal evidence using a firm-level PSM-DID design based on an exogenous policy shock. Overall, this paper offers new institutional insights and empirical evidence on how capital can be structured to support breakthroughs in strategically critical technologies.