Moore Threads: China's first GPU IPO opens +468% on its domestic-chip bet

Moore Threads designs full-function GPU chips and the MUSA software architecture behind them, selling compute acceleration for AI training and inference, graphics, video, scientific computing and simulation to Chinese cloud and enterprise customers.

That China's AI build-out would need domestic all-function GPUs, and a software-compatible MUSA stack could win the customers Nvidia could no longer serve.

Zhang Jianzhong, who spent 15 years at Nvidia, rising to global vice president and China head, founded Moore Threads in Beijing in 2020 to build domestically owned full-function GPUs. The company says its MUSA architecture supports AI acceleration, graphics rendering, scientific computing and simulation, and is compatible with mainstream GPU ecosystems. Revenue climbed from ¥46 million in 2022 to ¥124 million in 2023, ¥438 million in 2024 and ¥702 million in the first half of 2025.

The US placed Moore Threads on its Entity List in 2023, restricting access to US-origin tools, IP and design software; the company said it was reshaping its supply chain while warning that replacing suppliers could raise costs and lengthen product cycles. It kept investing ahead of revenue, spending a cumulative ¥4.3 billion on R&D across 2022-2024 and H1 2025 while reporting net losses of ¥1.89 billion, ¥1.70 billion, ¥1.62 billion and ¥271 million in those periods, and held 514 patents by mid-2025. Under China's 2025 STAR Market reforms its application was accepted on June 30 and registered on Oct 30 - 122 days in total - with Lenovo, Tencent, Shenzhen Capital Group, China Mobile and Hongshan among pre-IPO investors.

On 2025-12-05 Moore Threads priced 70 million shares at ¥114.28 (the year's highest A-share IPO price), raising about ¥8 billion, and opened on the STAR Market at ¥650, up 468.78%, before closing at ¥600.50, up 425.46%. The company still expects no consolidated profit before 2027 and says the real test - closing the gap with Nvidia in bandwidth and single-card performance - starts now.

Export controls turned a strategic argument into an order book: Chinese cloud and AI buyers needed a domestic GPU whatever the spec gap, which drove the debut's strong subscription response.

The MUSA software bet, not just the silicon, made the pitch credible: compatibility with mainstream ecosystems let customers port Nvidia-era code instead of rewriting it, lowering the switching cost.

China's 2025 STAR Market reform fast-tracked the listing - acceptance to registration in 122 days - letting Moore Threads raise capital before GPU rivals crowded the window.

The 468% debut shows investors priced strategic scarcity rather than profit; the company itself guides to no consolidated profit before 2027, so the premium is a loan against future execution.

Sanctions can create a market faster than a company can fill it: strategic-premium valuations buy time, but the chip still has to work well enough that customers keep buying once the premium cools.

As of its 2025-12-05 listing, Moore Threads (688795.SH) operates as China's first publicly traded GPU pure-play, using its roughly ¥8 billion IPO to fund next-generation AI training-and-inference chips, graphics chips and AI SoCs. The prospectus showed 514 patents by mid-2025, cumulative R&D above ¥4.3 billion, and no consolidated profit expected before 2027. It races fellow 'Four Dragons' MetaX, Birentech and Enflame for cloud procurement; a systems integrator told Jiemian over 80% of new Chinese data-center deployments could adopt domestic GPUs within two to three years.