Chinese GPU maker MetaX files for Hong Kong IPO six months after 700 percent Shanghai debut

China’s GPU champions are racing to the stock market, and MetaX just made its second move.

The filing

The Shanghai-based GPU maker, founded by former AMD engineers, has confidentially filed for a Hong Kong listing, targeting an IPO by the end of 2026, per SCMP.

It comes about six months after MetaX’s Star Market debut in December 2025, when the stock surged nearly 700 percent on day one after raising 4.2 billion yuan, roughly $596 million. A second listing this quickly is not a company topping up its treasury. It is a company striking while investor appetite for Chinese AI silicon is at a peak.

What the money is for

The plan calls for H shares of up to 5 percent of enlarged capital, with proceeds going to next-generation GPU development, its software ecosystem, and supply-chain investment.

That allocation list reads like a diagnosis of what separates Chinese GPU makers from Nvidia. The silicon gap is real but narrowing; the software ecosystem gap, the CUDA problem, is the harder moat to cross, and supply-chain investment speaks to the manufacturing constraints that come with export controls. MetaX is raising money against all three at once.

The bigger race

The backdrop makes the filing legible. Beijing is pushing Chinese AI companies to drop Nvidia silicon, which turns domestic GPU capacity from a commercial opportunity into a strategic mandate. And MetaX is far from alone: peers Biren, Iluvatar CoreX, and Moore Threads have all listed since late 2025.

That cluster of listings amounts to a coordinated capitalization of China’s answer to Nvidia. Public markets, at home and now in Hong Kong, are being enlisted to fund the import substitution that policy demands. Whether any of these companies can convert that capital into a genuinely competitive alternative is the trillion-dollar question of the chip war.

Can any of China’s GPU makers become a real Nvidia alternative this decade? The market is about to price that question for the second time in six months.