In recent years, China's information technology industry has broken free from the predicament of "lacking chips and souls," rapidly emerging as a significant global force in the semiconductor sector. Behind this transformation lies the efforts of a group of chip unicorn companies that have overcome challenges in both hardware and software domains.
Recently, Moore Threads, which is racing to become "China's first domestic GPU stock," has become the focus of capital markets. Based on its financing valuation, the company has delivered what can be described as miraculous returns for early investors.
**Moore Threads Accelerates Toward IPO**
Moore Threads, in its sprint to become "China's first domestic GPU stock," has taken a crucial step amid public anticipation.
On September 26, Moore Threads announced that its Science and Technology Innovation Board (STAR Market) IPO application passed the Shanghai Stock Exchange listing committee review, and immediately submitted its registration application on the same day. Prior to this, Moore Threads received acceptance for its STAR Market IPO application on June 30, taking only 88 days to complete the approval process.
It's worth noting that most STAR Market companies typically take around 200 days from application acceptance to approval. As the only domestic company simultaneously focusing on "graphics + AI computing" GPU development, Moore Threads has encountered a rare historical opportunity.
Zhang Jianzhong, now 47, is himself a chip engineer with extensive GPU development experience. He graduated from Nanjing University of Science and Technology's Computer Science Department and previously worked at IT giants including Dell and HP before joining NVIDIA in 2005.
His tenure at NVIDIA represents a pivotal chapter in Zhang's career. He worked at NVIDIA for 15 years, serving as Global Vice President and General Manager for China, with the primary responsibility of expanding NVIDIA's GPU market presence in China. Under his leadership, the business's domestic market share increased from less than 50% in 2008 to 80% in 2020.
While NVIDIA's GPU business was advancing rapidly, China experienced its first wave of chip startup enthusiasm from 2019 to 2020. Driven by various favorable policies, a batch of startups emerged, including Biren Technology, Enflame Technology, and MetaX Integrated Circuits.
Recognizing the historical opportunity for domestic chips, Zhang chose to leave NVIDIA and established Moore Threads in Beijing in 2020. Unlike other chip companies, Moore Threads harbors significant ambitions, pursuing a "NVIDIA-style" full-function GPU approach with its core competitive advantage being the self-developed "MUSA" architecture.
MUSA is one of the few domestic GPU architectures supporting full-precision computing from FP4 to FP64. In the crucial aspect of ecosystem development, Moore Threads' MUSA didn't choose to build an ecosystem from scratch but instead emphasized compatibility with the existing NVIDIA CUDA ecosystem. Through proprietary tools, Moore Threads can automatically convert NVIDIA's CUDA code, significantly reducing user switching costs. Unlike NVIDIA CUDA's closed software ecosystem, if Moore Threads can attract developers through MUSA, it will form long-term competitive barriers.
With MUSA as the foundational cornerstone, Moore Threads can design and scale GPU hardware for different purposes using the same basic architecture. This unified approach's core advantage lies in dramatically improved development efficiency, enabling Moore Threads to rapidly deploy numerous products.
In terms of business strategy, Moore Threads has chosen a more challenging path: the full-function GPU development route. The company not only offers consumer GPU graphics cards but also professional graphics acceleration cards for enterprises, intelligent computing cards and graphics acceleration cards for servers, and SoC products (system-on-chip).
A broader product portfolio also means relatively larger R&D investments. According to prospectus data, from 2022 to 2024, Moore Threads' cumulative R&D investment totaled 3.81 billion yuan, higher than other domestic GPU companies. The flip side is that Moore Threads' losses have continued to expand accordingly, with cumulative losses exceeding 5 billion yuan over the past three years.
Currently, while Moore Threads products still lag behind NVIDIA in performance, they are already "highly competitive" among domestic chip products. The single-precision floating-point computing performance of Moore Threads' MTT S80 graphics card has approached the level of NVIDIA's RTX 3060.
Chip entrepreneurship is ultimately a long journey, and seeking breakthroughs, domestic GPU companies are increasingly turning to capital markets for support. In this regard, some astute investment institutions have already positioned themselves in advance.
**Winners Behind the Harvest**
As a unicorn company, Moore Threads has never lacked favor from investment institutions. However, different institutions will have varying returns in this capital boom. Some institutions demonstrated prescient vision in the angel round, harvesting the sweetest fruits.
In 2020, Moore Threads completed two rounds of financing within just three months. As a startup established for less than 100 days, its valuation immediately exceeded $1 billion, setting a new industry record for "fastest promotion to unicorn status" that year.
Subsequently, Moore Threads' financing pace was unstoppable, experiencing seven rounds of funding over five years with cumulative financing exceeding 10 billion yuan. The roster of investors behind the company is impressive, encompassing numerous state-owned and venture capital institutions including China Mobile, Shenzhen Capital Group, Shanghai Guosheng, Bank of China International, CCB International, China Merchants Venture Capital, Zhongguancun Science City, and Sequoia Capital.
By late November 2024, after Moore Threads announced the initiation of STAR Market listing guidance, many institutions were willing to pay premium prices to acquire existing shares from original shareholders, betting on post-listing liquidity premiums. Moore Threads indicated that from January to February 2025, numerous institutions including Houxue Capital, Shenzhen Capital Group, Qingdao Turing, Jiuyi Investment, and Wenzhou Kexin entered at record-high prices.
Prior to this IPO issuance, Moore Threads achieved a financing valuation of 29.845 billion yuan, with 82 shareholders. Among them, founder and actual controller Zhang Jianzhong undoubtedly benefits the most, with direct and indirect shareholding totaling 36.36%, corresponding to an equity value of approximately 10.7 billion yuan.
Among Moore Threads' luxurious investment institution lineup, the highest investment return winner is undoubtedly "Peixian Qianyao," which participated in Moore Threads' first round of financing. Business registration information shows that Peixian Qianyao has registered capital of 1.9048 million yuan and has only invested in Moore Threads as its sole external investment.
As the earliest external investor, Peixian Qianyao secured an extremely low entry price, with an initial investment of 1.904762 million yuan in Moore Threads. Currently, it holds 4.2494% of Moore Threads shares, worth approximately 1.268 billion yuan based on current company valuation, representing roughly 667 times returns.
This represents just primary market investment fervor. As Moore Threads' listing pace has clearly accelerated, secondary markets have shown obvious enthusiasm, with some investors even comparing it to Cambricon, believing it has tremendous upside potential. Therefore, although not yet listed, "Moore Threads concept stocks" in the A-share market have already begun to stir.
Even before the approval news emerged, Moore Threads concept stocks welcomed significant gains. Notably, Hetai, which directly holds 1.03% of Moore Threads shares, achieved three limit-up days out of four trading days from September 18-23.
On the first trading day after Moore Threads' approval, numerous Moore Threads concept stocks became active again. On September 29 morning, Chiling Information surged over 15%, Yingqu Technology hit the limit-up, while Hetai, ZKBC, and Lianmei Holdings showed strong gains.
However, due to Moore Threads' relatively dispersed ownership structure, these companies' shareholding percentages are relatively small, mostly under 1%, with many holding indirect stakes. The actual capital dividends they might receive from Moore Threads' listing remain to be observed.
**The Next Cambricon?**
Over the past three months, Cambricon's stock price has soared, once surpassing Kweichow Moutai to become A-share's "stock king," opening up imagination space for the domestic chip sector. Whether Moore Threads can replicate Cambricon's surge "miracle" is stirring many hearts.
From a business perspective, according to Moore Threads' official statement, this IPO plans to raise 8 billion yuan, diluting 10%-20% of shares, with proceeds primarily invested in AI chip and graphics chip R&D. After securing funding, Moore Threads' immediate priority will be advancing strategic transformation and product technology iteration.
Currently, Moore Threads' AI intelligent computing products mainly include clusters, cards, and integrated machines. Since last year, AI intelligent computing has become Moore Threads' core product and primary revenue source. The prospectus shows that AI intelligent computing products accounted for 94.85% of Moore Threads' revenue in the first half of 2025.
Moore Threads attributes this to significantly increased market demand for large model training, inference deployment, GPU cloud services, and other applications. Another key positive impact of AI intelligent computing product revenue growth for the company is its remarkable gross margin improvement.
In 2024, Moore Threads' AI intelligent computing products achieved a gross margin of 90.7%, with overall company gross margin rising from 26% in 2023 to 71% in 2024. Compared to NVIDIA's 75% gross margin in 2024, Moore Threads shows no significant lag.
From a revenue scale perspective, Moore Threads achieved 432 million yuan in revenue in 2024. In comparison, Cambricon's revenue last year was 1.174 billion yuan, approximately 2.7 times that of Moore Threads. However, like Cambricon, Moore Threads has entered a period of rapid performance growth. The prospectus shows that in the first half of 2025, Moore Threads' revenue reached 702 million yuan, exceeding its total revenue from 2022-2024.
Currently, among A-share listed chip companies, Cambricon, Hygon Information, and others have achieved high valuations. Particularly Cambricon, which is projected to achieve 5-7 billion yuan in revenue in 2025, but currently has a market capitalization exceeding 500 billion yuan, demonstrating capital markets' fervent sentiment toward the chip sector. As a capital "rising star," Moore Threads is naturally endowed with extremely high expectations.
Although current AI computing demand is experiencing explosive growth, with numerous players, the competitive pressure facing Moore Threads cannot be overlooked. An undeniable fact is that Moore Threads' AI computing products currently hold very low market share.
In its inquiry response, Moore Threads candidly admitted that in 2024, its AI intelligent computing products, graphics acceleration products, and intelligent SoC products held less than 1% market share in their respective domestic market segments.
Looking across the industry, besides Moore Threads, the other three companies among the "Big Four Domestic GPU Companies" are also accelerating their IPO processes. Enflame Technology and Biren Technology released tutoring filing reports in August and September last year respectively; MetaX Integrated Circuits' IPO application was accepted on June 30 this year and underwent second-round inquiry review on September 21, currently awaiting listing announcement.
In the future, increasingly more similar companies will enter capital markets.