By Nauman Khan
Publication Date: 2025-12-17 16:43:00
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Shares of China’s MetaX Integrated Circuits rocketed 700% on their Shanghai debut Wednesday, fuelled by Beijing’s push to cut reliance on foreign AI chips and robust retail demand.
The GPU maker priced its IPO at 104.66 yuan and opened near 700 yuan, briefly climbing to 895 yuan at session peak. The listing raised about 4.2 billion yuan ($596 million) and was wildly oversubscribed, underscoring intense investor appetite.
MetaX was founded by former AMD executive Chen Weiliang and joins a wave of domestic chip listings; rival Moore Threads jumped 400% at its recent debut. Analysts say the moves reflect policy support for homegrown semiconductors and a scramble by investors to back local alternatives to Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD).
The surge was not necessarily about visibly high near-term earnings, but fund managers warned that the surges were instead all about speculative retail money, policy hype, but many said that IPO offers pre-market players an opportunity to taste some sweet arbitrage.
