Nvidia (NVDA) didn’t ring the bell on this one, however its shadow was clearly throughout it.
A comparatively obscure Beijing chipmaker, Moore Threads, simply staged maybe one in all China’s wildest IPOs in years.
The so-called “Nvidia of China,” priced 70 million shares at CNY 114.28, elevating an eye-popping CNY 8 billion ($1.1 billion), whereas securing a stratospheric preliminary valuation close to CNY 53.7 billion (round $7.5 billion) when it went public on November 24, on Shanghai’s STAR Market.
Surprisingly, the true kicker wasn’t its valuation however the insatiable investor urge for food.
For perspective, it drew 4.83 million retail bidders and an eye-watering 4,126x oversubscription fee.
That equates to just about CNY 33.7 trillion (about $4.54 trillion) in orders flooding in, with the haul so large it surged previous Nvidia’s total market cap on the time ($4.5 trillion on the time of writing).
Moreover, giants equivalent to China Telecom and Meituan scooped up 14 million shares, whereas retail and sensible cash traders requested an excellent CNY 116.6 billion in mixed bids.
However the unbelievable enthusiasm wasn’t simply FOMO.
With U.S. export bans knocking Nvidia’s China market share from roughly 95% to successfully zero, Beijing’s tech sector is in determined want of a home-grown different.
Moore Threads provides them simply that, and although it isn’t a risk to Nvidia at this level, the celebs are aligning in a approach traders simply can’t afford to disregard.
A bit of-known chipmaker is all of the sudden attracting consideration that’s arduous to disregard
Picture by I-HWA CHENG on Getty Photos
All about Moore Threads, China’s Nvidia
Moore Threads clearly isn’t shy about its ambition or its spectacular résumé.
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James Zhang, a 14-year Nvidia veteran and the tech big’s former China GM, based the corporate in 2020 with the mission to provide sturdy GPUs for gaming and AI.
In doing that, the companies created their very personal CUDA-compatible structure, MUSA, enabling Chinese language builders to run AI and graphics workloads on domestically produced chips.
Its tempo of enlargement has been dizzying.
In simply 4 quick years, Moore Threads pushed out 4 GPU generations in Sudi, Chunxiao, Quyuan, and 2024’s Pinghu.
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If that wasn’t dizzying sufficient, the newest can reportedly prepare trillion-parameter fashions, which places it in the identical league as OpenAI’s GPT or DeepSeek’s LLMs.
Listed here are the high general-purpose LLMs proper now:
- OpenAI: GPT (e.g., GPT-5.1 class): “Best all-rounder.”
- Anthropic: Claude 3.5: “Calm analyst.”
- Google: Gemini 1.5/2.0: “Context + multimodal beast.”
- Meta: Llama 3.x: “Open-weight workhorse”
- DeepSeek: DeepSeek-V3/R1: “Aggressive efficiency plus math/coding”
From a monetary standpoint, it’s all progress and crimson ink, although.
Moore Threads’ top-line numbers surged from CNY 124 million in 2022 to CNY 438.5 million in 2024, hitting CNY 701.8 million within the first three quarters of 2025.
Nevertheless, the losses continued piling up, leaping to CNY 1.49 billion in 2024 and CNY 1.67 billion within the earlier yr.
China’s GPU upstart takes its shot
Moore Threads generated a ton of IPO traction to say the least, however the true query is whether or not it might probably significantly dent Nvidia’s GPU fortress.
Purely on scale, the hole is unbelievable.
Nvidia brings in over $187 billion in trailing-twelve-month gross sales, whereas Moore Threads is working with gross sales close to the $100 million to $150 million vary.
Moreover, the technical gulf can also be simply as extensive.
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Nvidia’s H100 data-center GPU pushes 1,000+ TFLOPS of tensor compute, whereas in accordance with Wccftech, Moore Threads’ MTT S80 peaks at 14.4 TFLOPS FP32, which is nice for serviceable mid-range gaming however nowhere close to the ability of an H100-class AI accelerator.
On high of that, the export restrictions imply Moore Threads is prone to be struck on older manufacturing nodes, compromising its efficiency.
Early opinions present that Moore’s GPUs have a ton of floor to cowl.
In a well-liked Reddit discussion board, one of many customers lamented their expertise:
“China’s first gaming GPU, the Lisuan G100, performs like a 13-year-old Nvidia GTX 660 Ti.”
— Posted by u/nhansieu1 in r/pcmasterrace, alongside their PC specs (Ryzen 7 5700X3D + 3060 Ti).
However, China’s huge home market provides Moore Threads a protected area to scale shortly. Will probably be a tall order, although, contemplating Nvidia’s shelling out a large$12.9 billion a yr on R&D (fiscal 2025 determine), whereas commanding a reported 90% of the AI accelerator market.
Nvidia’s China saga: Export controls, roadblocks, and native rivals
The best way Nvidia’s China enterprise imploded was nothing wanting extraordinary.
A market that drove up 1 / 4 of its data-center gross sales simply vanished when Washington determined that superior GPUs have been successfully a national-security danger, probably accelerating China’s army AI energy.
That stated, right here’s the grim timeline that flipped Nvidia’s China story:
- Oct 2022: U.S. bans A100/H100 exports over military-use issues; Nvidia pushes out the considerably weaker A800/H800 chips.
- Mid-2023: China stockpiles GPUs, as Nvidia forecasts $5 billion in second-half gross sales.
- Oct 2023: Loopholes shut out; A800/H800 additionally banned as Nvidia designs restricted H20.
- Late 2023: Moore Threads, Biren added to the Entity Checklist; China mandates 50% home chips.
- Apr 2025: Even H20 requires licenses, leaving an attention grabbing $18 billion in orders jeopardized.
- Oct 2025: CEO Jensen Huang says Nvidia principally went from “95% to 0%” market share in China.
Nonetheless, Nvidia’s China drawback has successfully gone from painful to existential.
It went from $4.6 billion in H20 chip gross sales in Q1 2025 to nearly zero the subsequent quarter, with China gross sales plummeting 63% as export guidelines shut the door.
Unsurprisingly, that unbelievable vacuum paved the way in which for native rivals to take cost. Huawei’s Ascend chips, Cambricon’s AI accelerators, Biren, and now IPO-fueled Moore Threads want to fill the hole, supercharged by conducive authorities insurance policies and insatiable native demand.
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