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A chip is like a heart, and computing power equates to national strength. As a frontrunner in "China's Chip" initiative, Shanghai, with just 2% of the nation's population, accounts for one-eighth of the country's total computing power.
As the year draws to a close and a new one begins, a formidable "core" force is fully emerging along the Huangpu River. From general-purpose GPUs to large AI models, and from foundational infrastructure to top-level applications, the capital market's frequent listings of "Shanghai technology sector" companies have created a dazzling landscape.
Behind this bustling activity lies the "code for striving" jointly written by Shanghai's two leading industries: integrated circuits and artificial intelligence. The revenue scale of the integrated circuit industry is projected to exceed 488 billion yuan by 2025, doubling over five years; the scale of the large-scale AI industry is expected to surpass 550 billion yuan, growing at a rate of over 30%, setting a new record.
Batch after batch of vibrant "young dragons" and "young tigers" are growing rapidly, driving new quality productive forces to surge with vitality, creating a spring-like atmosphere full of promise. The "Chip" Track Accelerates at a New Pace
The development of artificial intelligence, particularly the rise of large models, has propelled a significant surge in demand for computing power. According to Frost & Sullivan, China's general-purpose GPU market is expanding rapidly, with shipments reaching 1.6 million units in 2024, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 72.8% from 2022 to 2024. Shipments are forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 33% from 2025 to 2029. Furthermore, the share of domestically produced general-purpose GPU products increased from 8.3% in 2022 to 17.4% in 2024 and is expected to exceed 50% by 2029.
As the first new listing on the Hong Kong stock market in 2026, BIREN TECH not only became the "first GPU stock in Hong Kong" but also the largest new share issuance since the implementation of the Chapter 18C Specialist Technology Company listing regime. Along with Tianshu Zhixin, which recently listed on the Hong Kong Exchange, Muxi Holdings, which celebrated its first month on the A-share STAR Market, and Suiyuan Technology, whose IPO has been accepted for review on the STAR Market, "Shanghai chips" are demonstrating a powerful momentum of dragon soaring and tiger leaping.
It is reported that Tianshu Zhixin delivered approximately 15,000 general-purpose GPU units in the first half of 2025, achieving mass production of both inference chips and training chips, approaching the full-year 2024 level of about 17,000 units. Its products and solutions have already covered fields such as finance, healthcare, and transportation, facilitating over 900 deployments and applications.
Among Muxi Holdings' three major product series, multiple chips focused on inference and integrated training-inference have entered the stage of mass production. Huang Xiangjun, Vice President of R&D at Muxi Holdings, stated that due to the long R&D cycle of chips and the rapid upgrade iteration of application computing loads—an inherent mismatch—it is essential to build sufficient generality into the chips from the outset to adapt to the evolving and diverse computational needs.
At a symposium held on January 19th for experts, entrepreneurs, and representatives from fields including education, science, culture, health, and sports, Yan Junjie, founder and CEO of MiniMax, attended and spoke. Just ten days before this symposium, this company, only four years old, also knocked on the door of the capital market.
At MiniMax, the average age of its 385 employees is the "post-95s" generation, and the average age of its board members is just 32. R&D personnel account for over 70% of the workforce. They focus on developing multimodal general artificial intelligence technologies encompassing text, speech, and vision, cumulatively serving over 212 million individual users from more than 200 countries and regions, enterprise clients and developers from over 100 countries and regions, with overseas revenue contributing over 70%.
In 2025 alone, MiniMax's video models upgraded from the Video 01 series to the Hailuo 02 series, achieving a global ranking in the top two. These two generations of video models have not only helped users generate over 590 million videos but have also continuously broken new ground in complex dynamics, instruction following, and aesthetic presentation.
"For us, the model is the product," said Yan Yijun, Vice President of MiniMax. "We don't focus our energy on building super apps; what we value most is the generality and generalization capability of large models. While large models can achieve wonders through sheer scale ('brute force'), breaking new paths through paradigm-shifting algorithms is also possible. From its founding until September 2025, the company cumulatively spent $500 million, approximately 1% of OpenAI's expenditure during the same period."
In just over a month, five core AI hardware companies from Shanghai have listed in the capital markets, forming a highly watched "Shanghai sector." Increasing "Chip" Content Enhances Gold Content
The sound of the listing gong is not the finale, but the prelude to higher-level development.
On January 21st, Shanghai released its 2025 economic data, with the annual gross regional product exceeding 5.67 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.4% calculated at constant prices. Within this, the output value of the integrated circuit manufacturing and AI manufacturing industries grew by 15.1% and 13.6%, respectively.
Furthermore, in the latest World IC Association's "Global Top 100 Cities for Comprehensive Competitiveness in the Integrated Circuit Industry" ranking, Shanghai placed fourth globally and first domestically.
Tang Wenkan, Director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, stated that behind these impressive report cards lies the accumulated strength of over 1,200 integrated circuit enterprises, nearly 400 large-scale AI enterprises, and hundreds of thousands of industry professionals. Currently, Shanghai has established a comprehensive and mutually supportive integrated circuit industry chain system, nurturing a group of leading enterprises in细分 segments including chip design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, equipment/materials, and EDA/IP. This includes 35 companies listed on the STAR Market, ranking first in China.
Notably, some AI chip companies with innovative approaches are very active and are regarded by the industry as highly promising "rising stars." X-Times is one such company, founded in 2017 by a group of Ph.D. graduates returning from MIT. Its founder and CEO, Shen Yichen, had a cover article published in the international journal *Nature Photonics* during his doctoral studies.
He discovered that traditional electronic chips face physical limits when processing AI computations, unable to meet future growing demands, and thus proposed using photons as an alternative. Through continuous product development and iteration, the company launched its first optoelectronic hybrid computing acceleration card supporting scientific computing and complex commercial algorithms in 2025. At the same year's World Artificial Intelligence Conference, it also released its first optical interconnect and optical switching GPU super-node solution.
"Sometimes innovation is forced upon you. The reason we took a different path is that the route of simply 'copying homework' was blocked, which instead stimulated our creativity," Shen Yichen said. He predicts that within 3 to 5 years, photonic chips will account for over 30% of data center infrastructure.
Progressing from "multiple points blooming" to "a hundred flowers blooming," stepping into the nation's first large model innovation ecosystem community, "Model Space," the pace of "evolution" here is measured in days. Since its establishment just over two years ago, it has attracted over 200 AI enterprises to set up operations, driving the aggregation of more than 1,500 AI companies in its host Xuhui District, with about 800 of them being large model companies. The number of large model filings from this community accounts for 60% of the city's total.
Zhang Yun, Deputy General Manager of "Model Space," mentioned that every time she is asked about the number of enterprises, she has to check the latest statistics, fearing she hasn't kept up with the pace. Nowadays, "upstairs and downstairs form the industrial chain" and "neighbors become partners" has become the norm here. Innovative vitality continuously surges, and new incoming enterprises often have to "wait in line for a spot."
As one of the first batch of入驻 enterprises, Wu Wen Xin Qiong focuses on AI infrastructure. Leveraging its core technical advantage of "heterogeneous integration and software-hardware synergy," it enables different chips to work together, thereby reducing computing costs and making AI applications more inclusive. "This technology is akin to everyone originally speaking different dialects, resulting in high communication costs, but now we first convert everything into a common language (Mandarin)," said Xia Lixue, Co-founder and CEO of Wu Wen Xin Qiong.
Compared to some enterprises in the "incubation phase" (OPCs - one-person companies) or those with 20-30 person teams in the "rapid growth phase," Wu Wen Xin Qiong currently has over 200 employees, making it the largest entity within "Model Space." It is seen as being in the "pre-graduation phase," entering the next crucial stage of industrial development. Treating "Chip Matters" as Matters of "Urgent Concern"
The phenomenal "listing relay race" is no accident. It was observed that on the growth path of these enterprises, Shanghai's unique strategic deployment and diverse ecosystem construction are evident everywhere, featuring both "preparing for rain before it comes" and "providing timely help."
BIREN TECH was the first direct investment project of the Shanghai Guotou XianDao Artificial Intelligence Industry Mother Fund. In March 2025, this fund co-led an investment round in BIREN TECH, with several renowned investment institutions and industrial capital participating, amounting to several billion yuan.
As Shanghai's main platform for sci-tech investment, Shanghai Guotou has established a fund matrix including angel, VC, PE, mother funds, S funds, CVC, and buyout funds. It has assembled three major leading industry mother funds and future industry funds totaling 105 billion yuan in scale, forming a long-cycle support mechanism for core technology breakthroughs, industrial chain organization, and achievement commercialization.
Dai Minmin, Deputy Party Secretary and President of Shanghai Guoxin Capital Investment Co., Ltd., stated, "We do not push companies to compress R&D investment just to meet listing windows. Instead, we match the financing pace with the long-cycle nature of GPU R&D, aligning it with technology iteration and production capacity ramp-up. When BIREN TECH faced relevant changes and challenges, we not only co-led the investment but also leveraged the state-capital platform to connect it with多方 resources, ensuring the continuity of its R&D investment and avoiding the sacrifice of long-term technology roadmaps for short-term cash flow."
Liu Guang'an, Party Committee Secretary and Chairman of Shanghai International Group Asset Management Co., Ltd., also noted that the importance of building a modern industrial system is very clear in the proposals for the 15th Five-Year Plan. He believes future investments cannot be limited to the linear thinking of 'invest-exit' but must address technological innovation, industrial upgrading, and the development of the real economy with a more systematic approach.
Shen Yichen, founder of X-Times, frankly admitted that a major factor in choosing Shanghai for entrepreneurship was its excellent industrial ecosystem. He even found partners through a "Semiconductor Football Group" in Zhangjiang, literally "kicking" out collaborations on the field. However, what impressed him most was how "attentive" and "conscientious" the government departments were: because innovative products need pioneering pilot customers, yet the domestic industry tends to be conservative towards chip products, Shanghai not only provided recognition but also tried every means to connect them with trial scenarios, which played a crucial role in the early-stage product iteration.
Currently, Shanghai has formed a differentiated development pattern described as "one East, one West; one soft, one hard," focusing on building two AI innovation towns: Zhangjiang in Pudong (East) and Beiyang in Xuhui (West). Through "East-West linkage," it aims to create a development environment characterized by "low innovation costs and high intellectual density." These two towns, utilizing the "anchor tenant牵引" and "investment-incubation linkage" models, have cumulatively gathered over 300 AI enterprises and more than 6,000 innovation talents, creating innovation application clusters and making personal entrepreneurship using AI technology a tangible reality.
Looking ahead to the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, Shanghai will maintain strategic focus, continue to act as the "vanguard" and "pioneer," further concentrate on achieving innovation breakthroughs across the entire industry chain, accelerate the cultivation of leading enterprises, the attraction and development of high-level talent, and the provision of full-cycle service guarantees. It will continuously improve the industrial innovation and development ecosystem, accelerating its march towards becoming a world-class industrial cluster.
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