Enflame Technology is preparing to raise about £654 million through an initial public offering on Shanghai's STAR Market, putting one of China's best-known AI chipmakers firmly in the spotlight. The Tencent-backed company will open share subscriptions on September 2, after preliminary price consultations begin on August 28.
Enflame plans to issue 43.04 million new shares, representing 10% of its enlarged share capital. Founded in 2018, the Shanghai-based company is regarded as one of China's 'four little GPU dragons', alongside Moore Threads, MetaX and Biren Technology. The other three have already gone public.
Enflame intends to use the IPO proceeds to develop and commercialise its fifth- and sixth-generation AI chips, as well as software and hardware projects. The move comes as China encourages domestic semiconductor development amid its technology rivalry with the US.
The £654 million figure converts the reported $892.21 million IPO value using a USD/GBP rate of about 0.7335.
What Is Enflame Technology?
Enflame was founded in Shanghai in 2018 and develops AI chips designed for cloud computing. Its products cover AI training and inference, with the company developing processors, accelerator cards, computing clusters and related software.
China Daily reported in June that Enflame had developed five cloud AI chip products across four generations of architecture. Its fourth-generation L600 training and inference accelerator module had completed tape-out and silicon verification, although it had not yet entered large-scale commercial production.
Enflame is backed by Tencent, which is also its largest customer. Caixin reported that Tencent held a 20% stake and accounted for 83.8% of Enflame's sales revenue in 2025. The company recorded revenue of 990 million yuan in 2025, while its net loss narrowed to 1.2 billion yuan.
That financial picture helps explain why the IPO matters. Enflame is raising fresh capital to fund the next stages of its chip development rather than simply offering existing shares.
Why Is China Investing in Enflame?
The IPO is part of a wider push to develop China's domestic AI semiconductor industry. Enflame plans to put the proceeds towards its fifth- and sixth-generation AI chips, alongside advanced AI software and hardware collaborative innovation projects.
Further reports say that the company had previously earmarked 1.5 billion yuan for research, development and industrialisation of its fifth-generation AI chips and 1.2 billion yuan for its sixth-generation chips.
Enflame's position also needs to be viewed against China's reliance on overseas AI chip technology. China Daily described the four GPU companies as domestic startups seeking to challenge US dominance in AI computing, while the Shanghai Stock Exchange has described Enflame as a company advancing domestic computing autonomy.
Enflame remains much smaller than Nvidia in the Chinese AI accelerator market. Caixin reported that Enflame held a 1.7% share of China's AI accelerator card market in 2025, underlining the scale of the gap it faces.
The company's IPO will issue 43.04 million new shares. Around 8.61 million are initially allocated to strategic investors, while 27.54 million and 6.89 million are reserved for institutional and retail investors. CITIC Securities is the lead underwriter, with Guotai Haitong Securities and GF Securities as joint lead underwriters.
The timing is also notable because China's AI and semiconductor listings have attracted heavy investor interest. However, the recent performance of other technology listings shows that strong demand at launch does not guarantee sustained share prices.
Reports say that Unitree, China's best-known humanoid robot maker, had fallen roughly 45% after initially surging more than fivefold on its Shanghai debut.
