A once-high-flying Chinese software developer, which trumpeted its nationalistic ambition of making products that can replace foreign systems, said its founder had been taken away by local authorities for investigation. Shenzhen-listed ArcherMind Technology, once considered the Chinese equivalent to US open-source software giant Red Hat, said on Monday it received a notice from the disciplinary authority of Jinhua, a city in the eastern province of Zhejiang, on June 2 about the detainment of its founder and chairman Wang Jiping. The company said it had no information about the progress or conclusion of the probe. During the interim, ArcherMind has appointed former general manager Liu Bingbing as acting chairman. It is unclear why the supervisory commission of Jinhua would have the authority to detain and probe Wang, whose company is registered in Nanjing – capital of the eastern province of Jiangsu. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange said it issued a request to ArcherMind on Tuesday, demanding more details about Wang’s case. Chinese software vendor ignores sanctions risk on using MySQL open-source code Wang, who founded ArcherMind in 2006, received a master’s degree in mathematics from the US. After he went back to China, Wang started a contractor business for local mobile phone brands, helping them develop software based on open-source Android codes. ArcherMind, which develops and provides open-source software to its clients, came under the spotlight in 2019, after it signed a deal with a major supplier of Huawei Technologies Co. The deal fanned speculation by investors that it could help sanction-battered Huawei, as well as its peers – such as Xiaomi Corp, Vivo and Honor – reduce their dependence on American software amid the US-China trade war. Shares of ArcherMind gained over eight times within five months from September 2019 to February 2020. While the stock has lost nearly three-quarters of its value since then, it remains volatile. ArcherMind’s stock jumped nearly 8 per cent within a day after the People’s Daily , the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, published an opinion piece last month urging China to encourage the use of local software. People’s Daily urges China to adopt more local software “Technological bottlenecks have been limiting the development of China’s information technology sector,” Wang said during an industry forum last year, adding that ArcherMind would “unite thousands of companies across the country to compete with foreign rivals and reach a comparable level in five to 10 years.” In the first quarter this year, ArcherMind made a loss of 46 million yuan (US$6.9 million), following a loss of 30 million yuan in 2021. Shares of the company rose 11 per cent on Wednesday.