Chinese graphics card maker Biren raises $717M in IPO – News

Chinese graphics card supplier Shanghai Biren Intelligent Technology Co. has raised the equivalent of $717 million in its initial public offering.

The listing, which took place today in Hong Kong, saw the company sell 284.8 million shares. Buyers paid $19.6 apiece, the top end of the price range that Biren sought. Demand for the stock reportedly exceeded supply by a factor of nearly 26 among institutional investors.

Biren is the third Chinese graphics card supplier to have gone public this month. It was preceded by MetaX Integrated Circuits Shanghai Co. and Moore Threads Technology Co., which logged opening gain days of 400% and 700%, respectively. That hints Biren may also receive a warm welcome from investors when its stock starts trading on Friday.

Biren launched in 2019 and debuted a data center graphics card called the BR100 three years later. According to Tom’s Hardware, the chip comprised more than 77 billion transistors made using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s 7-nanometer process. The BR100 also used a TSMC technology called chip on wafer on substrate, or CoWoS.

Graphics cards include not only computing circuits but also a cache that stores artificial intelligence models’ data. The cache is supported by an HBM memory pool that isn’t as fast, but can hold more information. TSMC’s CoWoS technology makes it possible to implement the computing circuits, cache and HBM memory on a single silicon die called an interposer. The interposer provides structural support to the chip and enables its components to exchange data with one another.

Biren disclosed in its IPO paperwork that it generated sales of 336.8 million yuan, or about $47.8 million, last year. The company has pending and contracted orders worth about $300 million. It’s not yet profitable.

Biren’s IPO comes a few days after Moore Threads, one of the other graphics card makers that went public this month, debuted its newest chip. The processor is reportedly called Lushan and features optimizations geared towards running video games. Moore Threads says that the chip can provide 50 times better performance for ray tracing workloads than earlier silicon.

The graphics card makers’ listings will soon be followed by yet another semiconductor IPO. CXMT Corp., a Chinese maker of memory chips, on Tuesday announced plans to sell 10.6 billion shares for $4.22 billion. The company will use the proceeds to finance DRAM research initiatives and upgrade its production lines.

CXMT is also building a fab that will produce HBM memory, the high-speed RAM variety that ships with server-grade graphics cards. The company plans to begin producing HBM chips by the end of 2026.

Photo: Unsplash