By Tracy Qu and Sherry Qin
Investors rushed to snap up shares of Chinese AI chipmaker Moore Threads in its Shanghai debut, betting that Beijing's push to end reliance on foreign technology could help create a homegrown Nvidia.
Moore Threads, founded in 2020 by a former Nvidia executive, soared more than four-fold in its first day of trading Friday after raising over $1 billion in its initial public offering.
Investors have poured billions into the Chinese tech sector since Chinese startup DeepSeek released a large-language model earlier this year to rival OpenAI's ChatGPT, at a fraction of the cost.
China's AI sector has gone from strength to strength since then, with tech titans like Alibaba and Tencent competing to roll out increasingly advanced AI models.
Beijing is bent on keeping the momentum going as it grapples with the U.S. for tech dominance, making autonomy in strategic sectors a core tenet if its five-year plan for the economy. A big piece of the puzzle is closing the gap on the advanced chips companies need for AI.
Analysts say China-made chips lag behind their foreign counterparts in critical aspects, but policymakers' rallying cry and investors' enthusiasm for all things AI offer a strong incentive for firms to keep innovating.
"The AI era is rapidly expanding the demand for GPUs, creating an accelerated window of opportunity for domestic substitution," Sinolink Securities said in a recent research note.
Moore Threads, which designs graphics processing units for AI training, is the first of the so-called "Four Little Dragons of Domestic GPU" to go public. The moniker refers to the club of startups viewed as among the most promising, many of which are unicorns.
To do so, it used a recently re-opened pathway for unprofitable startups in key tech industries to list on Shanghai's Nasdaq-like Science and Technology Innovation Board, or STAR Board.
Moore Threads' revenue more than tripled in 2024 but it remained loss-making. The company plans to use the IPO proceeds to fund new AI chip research and development, and to bolster working capital.
Intense demand for the offering suggests that the pipeline of IPOs could be similarly robust. The retail portion was oversubscribed by about 2,750 times, a filing showed.
Shanghai-based chip company MetaX has also filed for an IPO, seeking to raise $551.5 million.
Write to Tracy Qu at tracy.qu@wsj.com and Sherry Qin at sherry.qin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 04, 2025 23:33 ET (04:33 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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