MetaX and Moore Threads’ IPOs underscore Chinese chipmakers’ growing challenge to Nvidia

It felt like déjà vu when shares of chipmaker MetaX Integrated Circuits soared 700% in its Shanghai market debut on Wednesday. Moore Threads surged over 400% on its first day of trading just two weeks earlier.

They’re the latest Chinese AI chip companies the country’s investors are ploughing money into, as it races to develop its own semiconductors and challenge Nvidia’s dominance in the face of U.S. export curbs.

Both are developing graphics processing units (GPUs), the type of chip manufactured by Nvidia and used for advanced AI.

Investor enthusiasm around Chinese AI-chip IPOs is partly shaped by longer-term expectations that China will build a self-sufficient semiconductor ecosystem as tensions with the U.S. continue, Macquarie’s equity analyst Eugene Hsiao told CNBC.

Washington has barred sales of Nvidia’s most advanced semiconductors to the country. While U.S. President Donald Trump relaxed export curbs for some Nvidia chips, regulators in the country were planning to limit access to the company’s processors, the Financial Times reported earlier this month, as it looks to wean itself off overseas tech in the AI race. 

None of China’s AI chipmakers — which include a cohort of tech giants like Huawei, Alibaba and Baidu — have been able to develop processors comparable to Nvidia’s most advanced so far.

But…