A Beijing chip designer spent five years building a GPU meant to challenge Nvidia — and still had not turned a profit.
In late 2025 it sold 70 million shares to the public anyway, at a price that put a single lot out of reach for most retail buyers.
Across the border in Hong Kong, a rival GPU maker did much the same, betting that "domestic substitution" is worth a loss today.
Key takeaways
- Moore Threads (摩尔线程, SSE code 688795) won CSRC registration approval on October 30, 2025, priced its STAR Market (科创板) offer at RMB 114.28 per share, and raised gross proceeds of about RMB 8.0 billion (≈ US$1.13B), net about RMB 7.58 billion (≈ US$1.07B).
- The company was loss-making at listing: 2024 net loss was about RMB 1.62 billion (≈ US$228M) on revenue of about RMB 438 million (≈ US$62M).
- Biren (壁仞科技) cleared its HKEX hearing in December 2025 and began trading in early 2026, raising gross proceeds of HK$5.583 billion (≈ US$716M) and net HK$5.375 billion (≈ US$689M) — also while loss-making.
- Both directed roughly 80%+ of proceeds to R&D, confirming that China's AI-chip IPO class is selling future capacity, not current earnings.
Moore Threads: the prospectus math
Moore Threads, founded in 2020, builds "full-function" GPUs on its proprietary MUSA architecture and had launched four GPU generations by the time it went public. Its IPO moved fast through the STAR Market (科创板) pipeline: the application was accepted on June 30, 2025, it passed review on September 26, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) approved registration on October 30, 2025 (批复证监许可〔2025〕2423号).
The offering itself was large. The company issued 70,000,000 shares at RMB 114.28 each — about 14.89% of post-issuance share capital — for gross proceeds of RMB 7,999,600,000 (≈ US$1.13B) and net proceeds of RMB 7,576,052,300 (≈ US$1.07B), according to the company's SSE disclosure. Funds landed on November 28, 2025. Chinese media described it as the A-share "first domestic GPU stock" (国产GPU第一股).
Crucially, the raise was not backed by profit. From 2022 to 2024, revenue climbed from RMB 46.08 million to RMB 124 million to RMB 438 million (≈ US$62M), a compound annual growth rate of about 208%, but the business posted net losses of RMB 1.894 billion, RMB 1.703 billion, and RMB 1.618 billion (≈ US$228M in 2024). Cumulative R&D spend over 2022–2024 was RMB 3.81 billion (≈ US$537M), equal to roughly 626% of that period's revenue. As of June 30, 2025, the actual controller, Zhang Jianzhong (张建中), held 36.36% of shares.
Why it qualified for the STAR Market
Moore Threads did not list under a profitability test. It used a STAR Market (科创板) standard that requires an expected market cap of at least RMB 1.5 billion, prior-year revenue of at least RMB 200 million, and R&D of at least 15% of revenue over three years. The company met the bar on growth and R&D intensity rather than earnings — the same gateway that lets pre-profit hardtech reach public capital.
The use of proceeds is almost entirely forward-looking. Of the ~RMB 8.0 billion (≈ US$1.13B) target, about RMB 2.51 billion was earmarked for next-generation autonomous, controllable AI training-and-inference chips, RMB 2.502 billion for graphics chips, RMB 1.982 billion for AI system-on-chip (SoC, 系统级芯片) development, and RMB 1.006 billion for working capital. None of it is a dividend.
Biren: the Hong Kong parallel
Biren (壁仞科技) shows the same story on a different exchange. The Shanghai-based general-purpose GPU (GPGPU, 通用图形处理器) developer cleared its HKEX hearing on December 17, 2025 — after a CSRC overseas-issuance filing on December 15 — and began trading in early 2026, billed as the first Hong Kong-listed GPU stock (港股GPU第一股). Joint sponsors were CICC (中金公司), Ping An Securities (平安证券), and BOCI (中银国际).
Biren raised gross proceeds of HK$5.583 billion (≈ US$716M) and net HK$5.375 billion (≈ US$689M), which it said was the largest listing under HKEX's Chapter 18C regime for specialist technology firms. About 85% of net proceeds were slated for R&D, including next-generation GPGPU chips such as the BR20X and BR30X. Founder, chairman and CEO Zhang Wen (张文) held 17.74% before listing.
Biren's finances mirror Moore Threads'. Revenue rose from RMB 499,000 in 2022 to RMB 62.03 million in 2023 to RMB 337 million (≈ US$47M) in 2024, while net losses ran RMB 1.474 billion, RMB 1.744 billion, and RMB 1.538 billion (≈ US$217M in 2024); the first half of 2025 alone added another RMB 1.601 billion loss. R&D spend was RMB 1.018 billion, RMB 886 million, and RMB 827 million across 2022–2024.
The common thread: selling the future, not the present
Both deals are best read as financing events for capacity, not votes of confidence in current cash flow. Each raised hundreds of millions of dollars while losing more than it earned, and each committed the overwhelming majority of proceeds to chips still in development. That is a rational structure for a capital-hungry semiconductor race — but it also means investors are underwriting roadmap execution, not trailing results.
According to Li An, chief scientist at BrainNet (脑机网), the parallel A-share and Hong Kong listings of domestic GPU makers signal that China's AI-compute financing has moved from venture rounds to public markets, where the cost of capital is lower but the scrutiny is permanent.
Honest limitations
- Figures for Moore Threads come from its SSE (上海证券交易所) disclosure and Chinese state-affiliated financial media; Biren figures come from HKEX hearing documents and Chinese state media. We did not independently audit either company's financial statements.
- Both companies are pre-profit; "raise amounts" are gross/net at issuance and say nothing about post-listing market value, which has been volatile for hardtech names.
- This article does not cover other domestic GPU contenders (e.g., MetaX / 沐曦, Enflame / 燧原) in depth, nor the U.S. export-control backdrop that shapes their addressable market.
- Exchange rates used are approximate (≈ RMB 7.1 = US$1, ≈ HK$7.8 = US$1) and will shift the dollar figures slightly.
What readers can do now
- Read the original exchange filings — the SSE "募集资金" (raised-funds) reports for Moore Threads and the HKEX hearing document for Biren — before citing any raise figure; secondary "RMB 80亿 / HK$55亿" headlines often omit net proceeds and fees.
- Separate the IPO raise from the company's burn rate: compare gross proceeds against the most recent annual net loss to see how many years of losses the raise covers.
- Track whether post-listing R&D spending actually tracks the stated allocation; for pre-profit chip firms, the credibility of the roadmap — not the opening price — is the real signal.