In 2025, China’s hard technology industry experienced an unprecedented period of collective explosion. Sparks of technological innovation turned into an all-consuming fire, and the depth and breadth of capital investment continued to expand. Companies Moore Threads, MetaX, Biren Technology, Iluvatar CoreX, Terminus Tech, Zhipu AI and MiniMax rose powerfully, forming the “Seven Heroes” camp of Chinese hard technology. Behind the rise of the “Seven AI Heroes” is a valuation of $30 billion, which has become a “value watershed” testing the quality of China’s hard technology.
Moore Threads.
Possesses a strong “NVIDIA gene”, founded in June 2020 by former NVIDIA global vice president Zhang Jianzhong, aiming to create the “best full-featured GPU in China”. The company has built four product matrices: AI computing, professional graphics acceleration, desktop graphics acceleration, and intelligent SoCs. Its investors include major Chinese internet giants and local state-owned asset platforms, with a pre-IPO valuation of $4.221 billion. In December 2025, after listing on the STAR Market, the share price soared 425% on the first day, with a market capitalization exceeding 330 billion yuan (approximately $45.21 billion). In terms of performance, revenue for 2022–2024 was approximately 46 million yuan (about $6.31 million), 124 million yuan (about $16.98 million), and 438 million yuan (about $59.96 million) respectively; revenue for January–September 2025 was 785 million yuan (about $107.47 million), an increase of 181.99% year-on-year.
MetaX.
Distinctly marked by the “AMD school”, founder Chen Weiliang and his team are former AMD employees. The product matrix covers three areas: intelligent computing, general-purpose computing, and graphics rendering: the “Xisi” series (AI inference), the “Xiyun” series (training and inference), and the “Xicai” series (graphics rendering). From 2022 to 2024, MetaX’s revenue was 426,400 yuan (about $58,400), 53.0212 million yuan (about $7.26 million), and 743 million yuan (about $101.68 million) respectively. In the first three quarters of 2025, the company’s revenue grew 453.52% year-on-year to 1.236 billion yuan (about $169.23 million). Major Chinese industrial capital and government platforms have actively invested, with a pre-IPO valuation reaching $2.984 billion, just one step away from $3 billion. In December 2025, on its first day of listing on the STAR Market, the opening price rose 750%, with the maximum profit per lot reaching nearly 400,000 yuan (about $54,760), making it the “IPO subscription king of the year”.
Biren Technology.
Founded in September 2019, founder Zhang Wen combines the instincts of a capitalist (Harvard law doctorate) and the operational experience of an industry executive from SenseTime; co-president Li Xinrong is a GPU veteran from AMD. The company focuses on large data centers, intelligent computing centers, and supercomputing centers, breaking through the computing power and energy efficiency ceilings of large-scale computing clusters with its proprietary architecture. It has assembled a luxurious team of investors, with a pre-IPO valuation fixed at $2.972 billion, approaching the $3 billion mark. In early 2026, it listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the “first GPU stock on the Hong Kong exchange”, rising 75.82% on the first trading day. Revenue from 2022 to 2024 grew from 499,000 yuan (about $68,300) to 337 million yuan (about $46.14 million); revenue for the first half of 2025 was 58.903 million yuan (about $8.06 million), a 49.9% year-on-year increase.
Iluvatar CoreX.
Founded in 2015, officially launched the development of general-purpose GPUs in 2018 and completed its Series A funding round. In 2021, it released its first domestic general-purpose GPU product and delivered it in mass production, breaking through the “bottleneck from tape-out to mass production” ahead of competitors. As the first domestic manufacturer to achieve mass production of general-purpose GPUs for training and inference, the company has formed a product matrix centered on the “Tiangai” series (training GPUs) and the “Zhikai” series (inference GPUs). As of the first half of 2025, cumulative shipments of general-purpose GPU products exceeded 52,000 units. Several leading financial institutions have also made investments, with a pre-IPO valuation of $1.697 billion. The performance growth trajectory is clear: revenue for 2022–2024 was 189 million yuan (about $25.87 million), 289 million yuan (about $39.57 million), and 540 million yuan (about $73.93 million) respectively, with a compound annual growth rate of 68.8%; revenue for the first half of 2025 was 324 million yuan (about $44.35 million), a 64.2% year-on-year increase. In January 2026, it listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, rising 8.44% on the first trading day, with a market capitalization reaching HK$39.877 billion.
Terminus Tech.
Founded in 2015 by Ai Yu, who has over a decade of private equity investment experience, having managed assets worth over 100 billion yuan (about $13.69 billion) and successfully grown numerous star projects such as SenseTime and Cambricon. Instead of competing on single-card computing power, it focuses on systematic AIoT computing power. At the computing power level, its proprietary T-Cluster super nodes enable seamless “edge-cloud” orchestration and high-speed data transmission; at the scenario level, it focuses on “spatial intelligence + embodied intelligence”, embedding computing power into robotics, autonomous driving, industrial digital twins, and other scenarios. Through the ecological synergy of “co-building computing power + co-sharing scenarios + co-creating value”, it promotes the transition of AIoT from the “Internet of Everything” to the “Intelligence of Everything”. This unique positioning makes it a “scarce asset” for capital, with a luxurious roster of investors and a pre-IPO valuation reaching $3.076 billion. Revenue from 2022 to 2024 soared from 738 million yuan (about $101.05 million) to 1.843 billion yuan (about $252.32 million), with a compound annual growth rate of 58%. In the first half of 2025, revenue grew 77% year-on-year to 632 million yuan (about $86.53 million), with revenue growth from AI industry digitization business reaching 191%. It is vying for the title of “China’s first AIoT stock” on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Zhipu AI.
Lauded as the “Chinese OpenAI”, founded in 2019 by Zhang Peng, an early member of the Knowledge Engineering Laboratory of the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University. In 2021, it launched the development of the GLM framework, and in August 2022, introduced the billion-level large language model GLM-130B. Relying on the GLM pre-training architecture, it has now built a full model matrix covering language, code, multimodality, and agents, with models adapted to over 40 types of domestic chips. Over six years, it has completed 8 rounds of financing totaling more than 8.3 billion yuan (about $1.14 billion), with a pre-IPO valuation of $3.463 billion, backed by leading VCs and internet giants. From 2022 to 2024, its revenue was 57.4 million yuan (about $7.86 million), 124.5 million yuan (about $17.05 million), and 312.4 million yuan (about $42.75 million) respectively; over three years, revenue consistently doubled, with a compound annual growth rate reaching 130%. Revenue for the first half of 2025 was 191 million yuan (about $26.15 million).
MiniMax.
A “dark horse” in AI, founded in early 2022 by Yan Junjie, a former executive of SenseTime. In just over three years, its valuation has risen to $4.24 billion, receiving investments and support from numerous leading internet companies and venture capital institutions, setting a record for the shortest time from founding to IPO for an AI company. Based on its own large model, it has built a product matrix of native AI products covering both B2C and B2B, including Hailuo AI, Talkie, Xingye, etc., and also provides open platform services for enterprise users and developers. The company’s revenue grew from zero in 2022 to $3.46 million in 2023 and soared to $30.523 million in 2024, an annual growth rate of 782.2%. As of September 30, 2025, the company already had over 212 million individual users from more than 200 countries and regions, as well as 130,000 corporate clients from over 100 countries.
Note:
The “$3 billion threshold” is not an official rule of the Chinese stock market, but a market slang term used to denote a threshold value for market capitalization or fund size in various scenarios. It is often used ironically or to refer to specific market rules, index inclusion standards, or capital access conditions.
The conversion from Chinese yuan to US dollars is based on an approximate exchange rate of 1 CNY ≈ 0.1369 USD.
