By Sherry Qin

Artificial-intelligence chip startup MetaX Integrated Circuits' shares jumped almost eightfold on their first day of trading, another blockbuster Chinese debut after peer Moore Threads made a splash earlier this month.

MetaX's shares closed at 829.90 yuan in Shanghai trading Wednesday, surging from their initial public offering price of 104.66 yuan. The IPO raised 4.20 billion yuan, equivalent to $596.4 million, in gross proceeds.

Chinese AI chip startups have accelerated their efforts to go public and tap capital markets for funding as Beijing has made technological self-sufficiency, including making AI chips domestically, a top priority for its next five-year plan.

Investors have shown great enthusiasm for companies linked to China's push for tech independence.

Moore Threads, which along with MetaX is in the "Little Dragons" club of promising chip and AI startups, listed earlier this month in Shanghai. Its shares surged 425% on the first day and have maintained momentum since then despite some volatility.

Both companies, which have yet to report a profit, took advantage of a recently reopened pathway for unprofitable startups in strategic industries to list on Shanghai's Nasdaq-like Science and Technology Innovation Board, or STAR.

The relaxed rules mean that even companies with zero revenue can go public. All they need is an estimated market capitalization of at least 40 billion yuan and products with high growth potential.

The surge in MetaX's shares on the first trading day sent its market value to almost 340 billion yuan, equivalent to $48.28 billion.

Despite investor enthusiasm over the newly listed AI chip startups, analysts view Moore Threads and MetaX as second-tier domestic AI chip suppliers behind Huawei and Cambricon Technologies.

Founded in 2020 by former AMD employees including Chen Weiliang, who is MetaX's chairman, the company focuses on full-stack graphics processing units and related solutions.

MetaX recorded a loss of 1.41 billion yuan in 2024 despite revenue of 743 million yuan. Almost all of MetaX's revenue came from its flagship C500 chip used for AI training and inference.

It plans to use the proceeds from the IPO to support high-performance GPU research and development, it said.

MetaX expects to break even as early as 2026, according to its prospectus.

However, as its products are still subject to wider industry customer adoption, and face fierce competition from domestic peers and supply-chain risks given its fabless model, "revenue may not grow as expected, and there is a risk of continued losses in the future," MetaX said in its prospectus.

Write to Sherry Qin at sherry.qin@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 17, 2025 02:29 ET (07:29 GMT)

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