Chinese artificial intelligence chipmaking champion Shanghai Biren Technology is raising HK$7 billion (US$892.5 million) to boost production of its graphics processing units (GPUs), joining a fierce domestic battle to capture Nvidia’s market share in the country amid a global AI boom.
The company, which went public in Hong Kong in January, announced that it would issue 153 million new shares at HK$46.2 each, representing a 9.9 per cent discount to the stock’s closing price of HK$51.3 last Friday, according to a stock exchange filing on Sunday.
“Customers such as cloud service providers, AI data centres and enterprise customers are substantially expanding their AI computing deployments,” the company said in the filing.
“Facing robust customers’ demand, the company takes the view that it is essential to maintain adequate capital to ramp up the production of the company’s next-generation [general purpose] GPU solutions in order to ensure timely fulfilment of orders,” it added.
Shares of Biren rose nearly 1 per cent before reverting to a 2.5 per cent drop on Monday morning. The stock has surged over 150 per cent since its initial public offering (IPO).
The aggressive pace of fundraising comes as skyrocketing chip demand from China’s massive AI data centre buildout has sparked a race among local AI chip developers to scale up production.