Yet another chipmaker listed on Chinese markets with bumper gains on Wednesday, raising concerns that Beijing’s push for artificial intelligence self-reliance could be hyping up stocks of companies despite their lags in technology.
Chipmaker MetaX Integrated Circuits jumped 700% on its debut on the Shanghai Stock Exchange after opening at 700 yuan a share versus an IPO price of 104.66 yuan.
At one point, the stock surged as high as 895 yuan before ending the trading session at 829.9 yuan, up 693%.
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Founded by former AMD executives, MetaX raised roughly $600 million in an initial public offering last week.
“It’s another IPO tale in China that turns a crow into a phoenix,” said fund manager Yang Tingwu at Tongheng Investment.
The price surge “creates huge arbitrage opportunities” for pre-IPO investors, Yang said, and “we’re likely witnessing the stock’s peak level for the next five years.”
Makers of artificial intelligence (AI) chips are rushing to sell shares in China and making bumper gains despite persistent AI bubble concerns in other markets.
Early this month, its rival Moore Threads debuted on the Shanghai exchange with a 400% jump in share price. It continued to soar until last week and his since slumped nearly 24% from its peak.
The fall came as the company – dubbed by some as ‘China’s Nvidia’ and ‘Nvidia Killer’ — warned investors of “trading risks” stemming from its technology gaps. In an exchange filing, the company said its new products were yet to generate any revenue and that it “was lagging behind international peers on “comprehensive R&D capabilities, core technology accumulation, and product customer ecosystem”.
Moore Threads raised $1.1 billion in its Shanghai IPO in late November.
That’s even as Chinese AI chipmakers remain cut off from cutting-edge Western chipmaking tools. Prior to the US’ extensive restrictions on exports of top chip technologies to China, Beijing was largely dependent on Western technology for semiconductors — technology that has taken decades to develop.
‘Frothy’ share prices
Those concerns ring true for MetaX too.
The company flagged a number of risk factors in its IPO prospectus, including supply chain disruption from US tech restrictions, as well as its significant technology gap with Nvidia and AMD.
Nvidia is considering adding production capacity for its H200 AI chips due to strong orders from Chinese clients, after US President Donald Trump this month gave a green light to exports of Nvidia’s second-fastest AI chips to China.
In the home GPU market, MetaX competes with Moore Threads, as well as Hygon Information Technology and Biren.
In the so-called ASIC chip business, it competes with Cambricon, Huawei Technologies’ HiSilicon, Baidu’s Kunlunxin and Alibaba Group’s T-Head.
“MetaX’s technology lags Moore Threads, and it faces stiff competition from Huawei and Alibaba,” Yuan Yuwei, a fund manager at Trinity Synergy Investments in Hong Kong, said, adding that there will be room to improve, “but under the current circumstances, there’s definitely froth in its share price.”
AI IPO rush
The rush of AI chipmaker listings in China comes as companies look to capitalise on interest generated by a government drive to boost local production in competition with the US.
Beijing has pushed to reduce reliance on chips from US firms Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.
“AI and semiconductors are key areas of competition in the Sino-US tech rivalry,” Guotai Haitong Securities said in a report ahead of MetaX’s listing. “Against the backdrop of geopolitical tension, AI chipmaking has huge growth potential,” as China seeks to achieve self-sufficiency.
Researchers at Frost & Sullivan forecast China AI chip sales to top $189 billion by 2029, versus $54 billion in 2026.
On Monday, AI chip startup Biren Technology won regulatory approval to sell shares publicly in Hong Kong, while rival Kunlunxin also plans an IPO in the city. Another AI chipmaker, Enflame, has hired Citic Securities to prepare for a flotation.
“Chinese policymakers are greenlighting IPOs for AI chipmakers to support home-grown advanced technology,” Yuan, at Trinity Synergy Investments, said.
“Domestic chipmakers lag US rivals, but if they can raise tens or hundreds of billions to spend on talent, you cannot rule out their breakthrough.”
IPO fundraising in China jumped 23% in 2025 from a year earlier to exceed 160 billion yuan, according to KPMG, with 23% of the proceeds going to the technology, media and telecom sector.
Banking on Beijing
MetaX, which makes graphics processing units (GPUs), raised 4.2 billion yuan ($596 million) last week in a share sale that was more than 4,000 times oversubscribed by retail investors.
The IPO – China’s sixth biggest so far this year, according to KPMG – priced the money-losing startup at 50 times its 2024 sales. That compared with a multiple of 34 for Nvidia and 14 for AMD, MetaX said in a pre-listing statement.
MetaX’s debut catapulted the value of the five-year-old startup to more than 300 billion yuan ($42.58 billion) and boosted the wealth of founder and major shareholder Chen Weiliang, 49.
After working for AMD Shanghai for 13 years, Chen founded MetaX with a mission to “contribute to China’s rejuvenation and national prosperity.” The founding team also included Peng Li and Yang Jian, both former AMD engineers.
“The company is a leading GPU maker in China thanks to its AMD gene,” Li Hui, analyst at Huajin Securities, said in a report ahead of MetaX’s listing.
“It will likely benefit from China’s continuous push to replace foreign suppliers using indigenous technology.”
MetaX, which controls 1% of China’s AI chip market, projects the company’s sales to more than double this year due to the tech self-reliance drive, and expects to break even as early as next year.
- Reuters, with additional editing and inputs from Vishakha Saxena
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