Moore Threads Technology Co.,Ltd. (688795.SH), Metax Integrated Circuits (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (688802.SH), BIREN TECH (06082.HK), and ILUVATAR COREX (09003.HK) have recently released their first annual financial reports since going public.
In 2025, all four GPU companies reported substantial revenue growth, yet they remained unprofitable as a group. Among them, Moore Threads, Metax, and ILUVATAR COREX managed to narrow their losses, while BIREN TECH saw its losses widen due to increased research and development expenditures.
How can these GPU manufacturers, established only five or six years ago and still operating at a loss, support market capitalizations in the hundreds of billions? The answer lies within their extensive shareholder registries—a "capital relay race" involving market-oriented institutions, national-level funds, local state-owned capital, and industrial investors.
Inference scenarios have become the core engine for revenue growth. In terms of revenue, Metax reported the highest at 16.44 billion yuan. Moore Threads followed closely with 2025 revenue reaching 15.06 billion yuan. Both BIREN TECH and ILUVATAR COREX reported revenues exceeding 10 billion yuan, at 10.35 billion and 10.34 billion yuan respectively.
Regarding growth rates, Moore Threads and BIREN TECH saw their 2025 revenues more than double, increasing by 243.37% and 207.2% respectively. Metax and ILUVATAR COREX also reported significant revenue growth of 121.26% and 91.6% for 2025.
None of the four domestic GPU manufacturers were profitable in 2025: Metax reported a net profit attributable to shareholders of -7.89 billion yuan, narrowing its loss by 43.97% year-on-year; Moore Threads reported a net profit attributable to owners of the parent company of -10.24 billion yuan, a 36.70% reduction in loss compared to the previous year; ILUVATAR COREX reported an adjusted net loss of 4.38 billion yuan, narrowing by 32.1% year-on-year; BIREN TECH reported an adjusted annual loss of 8.74 billion yuan, with the loss expanding by 13.9% compared to the prior year.
Regarding revenue growth, Metax attributed it to a significant increase in GPU product shipments, which drove a substantial year-on-year expansion in revenue scale. Specifically, sales of its training-and-inference integrated GPU cards reached 33,649 units, up 147.31% year-on-year, while sales of its AI inference GPU cards surged to 4,946 units, an increase of 866.02%.
ILUVATAR COREX also reported a major revenue increase from its inference products. In 2025, revenue generated from its general-purpose GPU products reached 923 million yuan, up 149.6% year-on-year, accounting for 89.3% of its total revenue for the year. Revenue from its TianGai series training flagship products amounted to 584 million yuan, a 116.7% increase, while revenue from its ZhiKai series products for cloud and edge inference applications reached 339 million yuan, soaring by 238.2%.
Beyond individual chips, the large-scale deployment and delivery of intelligent computing clusters are becoming a new, significant component in the revenue and asset structures of domestic GPU manufacturers.
Metax's annual report indicated that by the end of 2025, cumulative sales of its GPU products had surpassed 55,000 units. These products have been successively deployed in over ten intelligent computing clusters, with its computing power network covering national AI public computing platforms, telecom operator AI platforms, and commercial AI data centers, spanning regions including Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Changsha, and Hong Kong.
BIREN TECH also disclosed that it has delivered several large-scale intelligent computing cluster projects, including a 2048-card optical interconnect and optical switching GPU super-node cluster, along with multiple commercially-oriented clusters comprising thousands of cards. Its client base encompasses national-level computing platforms, telecommunications operators, commercial AI data centers, AI/large model companies, and enterprise customers.
"The proliferation of AI Agents is creating a multiplier effect on computing power demand," the company noted. "A single Agent invocation can trigger dozens of model inferences, leading to an exponential increase in inference computing power requirements." It highlighted that advanced packaging, optical interconnects, and super-node technologies will be critical paths to overcoming scalability bottlenecks.
Capital continues to flow into the sector. Metax's annual report revealed that by the end of 2025, UBS AG and Mirae Asset Securities (proprietary funds) had appeared among its top ten circulating shareholders. Given that Metax only listed on December 17, 2025, their appearance as QFIIs in the shareholder list within just two weeks indicates substantial purchasing activity by these institutions.
Even before their IPOs, market-oriented institutions acted as early navigators for these domestic GPU companies. For instance, Sequoia Capital China was an early core external investor in both Moore Threads and Metax, while Qiming Venture Partners and Hillhouse Capital were early key investors in BIREN TECH.
State-owned capital has also played a crucial supporting role. Behind Moore Threads, local state-owned capital from Shenzhen, Wuxi, Wuhan, and Yancheng is widely distributed through various industrial funds. Metax has attracted core capital from Shanghai, Nanjing, Mianyang, and Tianjin. Similarly, local state-owned capital from Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Zhuhai stands behind BIREN TECH.
Notably, state-owned capital from the Yangtze River Delta region is densely represented in the shareholder lists. Shanghai's state-owned capital has not only made significant bets on the three local GPU firms—Metax, BIREN TECH, and ILUVATAR COREX—but has also, through Shanghai Guosheng Group, established a cross-regional presence, securing a position as the second-largest external shareholder of Moore Threads.
Wuxi's state-owned capital has a deep involvement with Moore Threads. Supported by multiple rounds of follow-on investment from Huishan State Control Group, Moore Threads established its system-level product R&D headquarters in Huishan District and plans to allocate a portion of its IPO proceeds specifically to a next-generation, independently controllable AI SoC chip R&D project in the district.
Furthermore, Nanjing's state-owned capital has focused its investment on Metax, taking a stake through Nanjing Heli Guoxin Zhixin. Various entities in Jiangsu province have invested in Moore Threads through funds and companies such as the Yancheng Big Data Fund, Peixian Qianyao Xing Technology, and Yangzhou Juxingxin.
Currently, following Moore Threads, Metax, BIREN TECH, and ILUVATAR COREX, another firm, Iluvatar Corex, is冲刺ing towards an IPO on the STAR Market. As domestic GPU manufacturers successively enter the capital markets, the competition among them is set to transition from a financing race to a second half focused on delivering operational performance.
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