The domestic GPU companies are experiencing a wave of IPO financing热潮. On January 2nd, Biren Technology (6082.HK) saw its stock price surge nearly 120% intraday on its first day of trading, becoming the "first GPU stock on the Hong Kong stock market." Last month, Moore Threads (688795.SH), touted as the "first domestic GPU stock," saw its share price skyrocket over four times on its debut, closing above 900 yuan per share on December 11th, far exceeding its issue price of 114.28 yuan. Another GPU company, Metax (688802.SH), saw investors who drew one lot in its IPO on December 17th, 2025, achieve paper profits approaching 400,000 yuan at their peak, setting a new record for single-lot profits on an A-share listing day in the past decade. However, behind the fervent capital pursuit lies another side of the story: the stock market values of these GPU companies have significantly retreated. After their initial surges on listing days, Moore Threads and Metax have now experienced substantial pullbacks of nearly 40%, retreating approximately 37% and 35% from their respective peak prices. Biren Technology ultimately closed up less than 80% on its first day, with a total market capitalization of less than 100 billion Hong Kong dollars, only about one-third of the market caps of Moore Threads and Metax. The激情燃烧的高估值 has encountered a "discount," reflecting the underlying commercial challenges of the GPU innovation narrative that still need to be overcome. Currently, the revenues of the aforementioned three companies have been growing over the past three years, yet none have achieved profitability. Due to the high R&D investment characteristic of the chip industry, capital expenditures continue. Furthermore, compared to international chip giants like Nvidia and AMD, several domestic GPU chip manufacturers still face certain competitive gaps and hold relatively low market shares. For investors holding shares in these "domestic Nvidia" concept stocks, the excitement of the share price surge at the moment of the bell-ringing has faded, while anxiety about whether the invested companies can quickly achieve self-sustaining profitability is becoming increasingly prominent. Perhaps, the real investment test has only just begun.
The capital market is vigorously promoting the local GPU narrative. Within just one month, three of the "Four Little Dragons of Domestic GPU" – Moore Threads, Metax, and Biren Technology – have successively gone public for financing, setting several new records in the capital market. On December 5th, 2025, Moore Threads officially listed on the A-share market, opening at 650 yuan per share, a 468.78% increase from its issue price, with its total market capitalization breaking through 300 billion yuan. Its market cap once reached as high as 442.2 billion yuan in the subsequent trading sessions. Twelve days later, Metax officially listed on the STAR Market, with an issue price of 104.66 yuan per share, raising a total of 4.186 billion yuan. It opened 568% higher, and its market capitalization subsequently broke through 300 billion yuan. Based on the opening price, investors drawing one lot could have earned 297,700 yuan that day, surpassing Moore Threads' 267,900 yuan and refreshing the A-share record for single-lot profits. When the first gavel sounded at the Hong Kong Exchange in the new year, Biren Technology, the "first domestic GPU stock in Hong Kong," also opened strongly. Its opening price was HK$35.70, an 82% increase from its issue price, with its intraday price peaking at HK$42.88, and its market capitalization once exceeding HK$100 billion. Even before their listings, these domestic GPU manufacturers had secured financing amounting to tens of billions, even hundreds of billions, within just a few years, attracting backing from prominent capital firms. Moore Threads raised funds over 10 times, totaling on the scale of hundreds of billions, with backers including Tencent, ByteDance, and Lenovo. Metax assembled over 100 investors; according to its prospectus, it underwent seven capital increases during the reporting period, with a total amount in the tens of billions. Biren Technology obtained 10 rounds of financing over the past five years; according to its prospectus, the total amount raised before the public offering exceeded 9 billion yuan. As the listing bells continue to ring for these domestic GPU pioneers, with the arrival of these highlight moments, almost everyone is betting on China giving birth to its own Nvidia. "The successive wave of listings by domestic GPU manufacturers is driven by intensified US-China tech competition and an explosion in demand. The market needs a company that can be a counterpart to Nvidia. Nvidia's extraordinarily high market capitalization provides immense room for imagination domestically," a primary market investor who has long focused on the semiconductor sector noted. However, "capital fervor" is just one side of the story of these companies taking turns on the stage. After obtaining their admission tickets, a more realistic issue of valuation is quietly emerging. Wind data shows that Moore Threads, bearing the label of the "first domestic GPU stock," has seen its stock price on the latest trading day pull back approximately 37% from its peak since its debut, with its market capitalization shrinking by over 160 billion yuan from its high of 442.3 billion. Metax's stock price has fluctuated downward in the trading days following its debut, pulling back about 35% from its peak, with its market capitalization decreasing by over 120 billion yuan from its high point.
On the day of Biren Technology's listing in Hong Kong, as of the close, its stock rose 75.82% to HK$34.46, corresponding to a market capitalization of HK$82.6 billion. However, this total market cap falls far short of Moore Threads' latest market cap of 276.3 billion yuan and Metax's 232.1 billion yuan. Its first-day performance did not replicate the multi-fold surges seen previously with Moore Threads and Metax. Amid the AI computing power wave, these star players in the GPU赛道 carry narratives that have created phenomenal events in the capital market. But now, they stand at a crossroads between the理想 of high valuation and the现实 of commercialization.
This stark contrast signifies that the market is not merely fond of "listening to stories" but will also re-examine the technological implementation and profit expectations of domestic GPUs. On one hand, substantial capital expenditures correspond to market capitalizations in the hundreds of billions, even trillions. Moore Threads' prospectus shows accumulated losses of approximately 5 billion yuan from 2022 to 2024, with cumulative R&D investment of 3.81 billion yuan during the same period, while total operating revenue was only about 600 million yuan. Metax's situation is similar. Its prospectus indicates that from 2022 to the first quarter of 2025, the company's cumulative net profit attributable to the parent company showed a loss of 3.29 billion yuan. Cumulative R&D investment for the same period was 2.466 billion yuan, far exceeding the total revenue of 1.116 billion yuan. Biren's report card is also not particularly impressive. Its R&D investment is no less than Metax's, with a cumulative 2.73 billion yuan invested from 2022 to 2024, but its revenue similarly lags. From 2022 to the first half of 2025, the company's cumulative revenue was 458 million yuan, with a loss of 6.357 billion yuan. The chip industry is R&D intensive, with a major portion of investment coming from the process of turning chip designs into physical products. These three domestic GPU companies adopt the industry-standard fabless operating model. Moore Threads explicitly stated in its prospectus that it outsources processes like wafer manufacturing, packaging, and testing to specialized foundries and packaging/testing factories. Metax also stated that its main business uses the Fabless model. Biren focuses on chip design and similarly employs a fabless model. A major cost in this model lies in tape-out fees. Tape-out is the critical juncture that determines the success or failure of a chip design. To complete a tape-out, design companies need to purchase expensive wafer capacity from foundries and pay substantial prepayments, which directly consumes huge cash reserves. Metax's prospectus revealed that its prepayment balance surged from 52 million yuan at the end of 2022 to 1.107 billion yuan by the end of the first quarter of 2025. The company stated that, influenced by industry practices, procurement cycles, and international situations, it places advanced orders and prepays a high proportion of the货款 to key raw material suppliers like wafers and HBM to secure future product supply. On the other hand, the market share of domestic general-purpose GPUs is generally low, and the industry exhibits a clear head effect. Moore Threads previously stated in its response to an inquiry letter that within the domestic AI chip market, the market share of GPUs is lower than in the global market. In 2024, Nvidia (full-function GPU), Huawei HiSilicon (ASIC), and AMD (GPGPU) held market shares of 54.4%, 21.4%, and 15.3% respectively in the domestic AI chip market. In the global market, Nvidia holds a monopolistic position. Biren Technology indicated that the Chinese intelligent computing chip market is highly concentrated among top players. Based on revenue generated in the Chinese market in 2024, the top two players collectively accounted for 94.4% of the market share, with a US-headquartered GPU company holding a 76.2% share, and the second-largest player being a domestic ASIC company. Beyond these, the rest of the market is relatively fragmented, with over 15 scaled participants, but no major player holds more than 1% market share. Metax also mentioned in its prospectus that the AI chip market has largely formed an oligopoly consisting of Nvidia and AMD, characterized as "one superpower and one strong power," with Nvidia holding over 80% of the global market share. Even more challenging than the chips themselves is the ecosystem, which represents the core barrier and value in the GPU industry. Nvidia's leading position stems from its established CUDA ecosystem. For domestic chip manufacturers, compatibility with Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem is not just a matter of technological implementation but also a survival challenge. Currently, the strategy for most domestic manufacturers is to ensure compatibility with Nvidia's CUDA within their own chip architectures. For example, Metax's MXMACA software stack achieves a high degree of compatibility with the CUDA ecosystem, a strategy centered on minimizing user migration costs. Moore Threads has established a developer ecosystem centered on its MUSA architecture, similar to Nvidia's CUDA. However, breaking through Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem remains a long and arduous journey. Moore Threads acknowledged in its prospectus that Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem holds a monopolistic position within the industry ecosystem, and the company will face challenges in expanding its business due to the high difficulty of GPU chip R&D and the difficulty of building a computational ecosystem barrier. "The stock price performance of domestic GPU companies since their listings reflects the market's strong expectations for future demand. It's just that the current performance of these companies hasn't fully materialized yet. For these companies, the market resources provided by the listing bring both pressure and motivation. How to transcend short-term speculative sentiment and realize long-term development potential still depends on achieving breakthroughs in core technological barriers," the aforementioned investor stated.
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