Biren Technology’s Hong Kong IPO gets green light as China’s AI chip firms rush to list

Beijing has greenlit Biren Technology’s initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong, as more Chinese artificial intelligence chip designers rush to go public amid heightened investor interest in these stocks.

Biren, which designs high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs), received regulatory approval to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange, according to a China Securities Regulatory Commission filing on Monday. This was expected to put the company on track to become the first GPU developer to go public in Hong Kong.

Co-founded by Wall Street veteran and entrepreneur Michael Zhang Wen in 2019, Biren planned to float about 372 million shares, but has not yet disclosed its fundraising target. According to mainland Chinese reports, the company could raise about US$300 million from its Hong Kong listing.

Biren’s IPO would mark a fresh milestone for China’s semiconductor industry, as the company joined the ranks of Moore Threads Technology and MetaX Integrated Circuits to go public and raise funds to expand operations amid surging domestic and international demand for AI chips.

Shanghai-based Biren forms part of China’s “four little dragons” in the GPU segment – along with mainland peers Moore Threads, MetaX and Enflame Technology – that looked to unseat Nvidia as the preferred AI chip supplier in the world’s second-largest economy.