Shanghai Biren Intelligent Technology Co, or more simply Biren, is said to be weighing up a Hong Kong initial public offering, insiders have told Bloomberg.
Biren has emerged as a major player in the domestic Chinese semiconductor design market after sweeping US sanctions restricted the country’s access to global leader Nvidia Corporation’s bleeding-edge artificial intelligence chip technology.
Though some Nvidia chips are still allowed to be imported into China, the advanced chips used for training large-language models and other AI programmes are not.
This has caused domestic semiconductor designers to up their game, with Biren emerging as a leader in the space.
The group’s workforce consists of former Nvidia and AMD alumni.
Insiders did not mention the prospective size of the IPO, but did say that it could happen in a matter of weeks.
Biren is also seeking a separate two-billion-yuan (£212mln) funding round. The group’s estimated valuation is said to be around US$2.4bn (£1.8bn).
Biren previously raised around 4.7 billion yuan from IDG Capital, Ping An Insurance Group Co. and China Merchants Capital.
As a fabless chipmaker, Biren will need to rely on external foundries to manufacture its chips.
This could pose an issue since Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which is the largest and most sophisticated foundry in the world by a wide margin, is subject to the sanctions imposed by the US.
This will leave Biren relying on less-advanced Chinese foundries.