Loss-making Chinese AI chipmaker founded by ex-AMD employees surges eightfold in debut

By Jules Rimmer

Huge investor appetite for Chinese AI plays sees IPO 3000 times oversubscribed.

MetaX IPO price was 104 yuan. It closed at 829 yuan.

MetaX Integrated Circuits, the Chinese AI chipmaker and part of a coterie of fast-growing tech stocks known as the "Little Dragons," enjoyed a wildly successful launch on the Shanghai exchange Wednesday.

After its initial public offering of 4.2 billion renminbi (about $596 million) was priced at 104.66 yuan, investor interest was such that it was more than three thousand times oversubscribed. Shares closed their first day of trading at 829 yuan, having touched 895 at one stage and briefly achieving a market capitalization of $47 billion.

Headquartered in Shanghai, MetaX was founded by former employees of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), including its chairman, Chen Weiliang. MetaX manufactures graphics processing units for AI developers and it's benefiting from the huge emphasis the Chinese government is making on home-grown AI chips and semiconductor production in its battle for technological supremacy over the U.S.

MetaX is a so-called fabless semiconductor that's designed chips both for AI inference and training. It's received backing from venture-capital firms including Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed and Matrix.

A tug-of-war between China and the U.S. over the export of Nvidia's (NVDA) advanced H200 chips and China's rare earths has been ongoing for several months. It's well-established that China would like to create its own national champions to promote technological independence from the U.S., speeding up the development of its tech ecosystem, and semiconductor production has become the main battleground in Sino-American geopolitical competition.

Demand was expected to be robust following the successful debut of another chipmaker Moore Threads earlier this month. That initial public offering was oversubscribed by 2750 times and has increased in value by six times since floating, attaining a market capitalization of around $44 billion.

Both Moore Threads (CN:688795) and MetaX are loss-making at present and valuations were challenging for the latest debutant with pricing at fifty times its 2024 sales at the time of its IPO.

Nvidia, for instance, is trading on 23 times its sales over the last twelve months according to FactSet. MetaX's IPO prospectus made that contrast clear in its IPO prospectus, comparing its own price-to-sales ratios with Nvidia and AMD as well as local rivals including Cambricon (CN:688256).

Other Little Dragon tech stocks considering a listing in public markets soon include Biren Technology, reportedly planning a Hong Kong IPO in January according to Reuters, Enflame Technology partly owned by Tencent, and China's OpenAI competitor Zhipu that Bloomberg recently speculated may soon float publicly.

-Jules Rimmer

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12-17-25 0531ET