Biren Technology IPO: The First GPU Stock of Hong Kong Explodes 82% on Opening Day

Key Points

  • Historic IPO: Biren Technology (Biren Keji 壁仞科技) listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) as the “First GPU Stock of Hong Kong” and the first new IPO of 2026.
  • Explosive Opening Day: Shares surged 82% at opening, reaching HK$35.7 per share from an IPO price of HK$19.6, with the market capitalization hitting HK$85.5 billion ($10.95 billion USD). The public offering was oversubscribed by 2,347.53 times.
  • Core Business: Biren Technology develops General-Purpose Graphics Processing Unit (GPGPU) chips and their proprietary software platform BIRENSUPA, crucial for Artificial Intelligence (AI 人工智能) workloads and specifically optimized for Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs).
  • Financials & Strategy: Despite rapid revenue growth (e.g., ¥337 million RMB in 2024), the company reports significant net losses (e.g., ¥767 million RMB in 2024) due to massive R&D spending (over 70% of operating expenses), but has a strong order backlog of approximately ¥2.06 billion RMB (~$290 million USD).
  • Software Compatibility & Market Niche: Biren demonstrated rapid software adaptation, such as “Day 0” support for Tencent’s (Tengxun 腾讯) translation model, underscoring their commitment to software compatibility, which is vital for developer adoption in the AI chip market.
Biren Technology IPO Launch Stats
  • IPO Listing Date: January 2, 2026
  • Exchange: Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX)
  • Stock Code: 06082.HK
  • Opening Price Surge: 82%
  • Retail Subscription: 2,347.53x
  • Market Cap (Opening Day): HK$85.5 Billion
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On January 2, 2026, the Chinese AI chip market just got a major player.

Biren Technology (Biren Keji 壁仞科技) officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), making history as both the “First GPU Stock of Hong Kong” and the first new IPO of the 2026 market year.

And the market absolutely loved it.

When Your IPO Opening Literally Doubles Overnight

The numbers here are genuinely wild.

Biren Technology’s shares surged 82% at the opening bell, trading at HK$35.7 per share versus the IPO price of HK$19.6.

Here’s what that means in real terms:

  • Retail investors who got allocated a single lot (200 shares) instantly saw profits of HK$3,220 ($412 USD) in the first few minutes of trading
  • The company’s market cap hit HK$85.5 billion ($10.95 billion USD) before the opening day dust even settled
  • For context, that’s a company that went from private to nearly $11 billion valuation in minutes

This level of opening day euphoria doesn’t happen by accident.

The demand signals leading into the IPO were absolutely insane.

The public offering was oversubscribed by a massive 2,347.53 times, while international institutional investors oversubscribed by another 25.95 times.

Translation: thousands of investors were competing for a limited number of shares.

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The Deal Structure That Made Everyone Want In

Biren Technology offered approximately 285 million H-shares globally, split between retail and institutional investors.

Here’s how it broke down:

  • Public offering: 17.39% of total shares
  • International placement: 82.61% of total shares
  • Final offer price: HK$19.6 per share
  • Net proceeds raised: Approximately ¥5.375 billion RMB ($688 million USD)

Nearly ¥700 million in capital for a GPU chip maker in an AI-obsessed market.

That money is critical for what comes next.

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What Exactly Does Biren Technology Build?

If you’re not familiar with why this company matters, here’s the elevator pitch:

Biren Technology develops General-Purpose Graphics Processing Unit (GPGPU) chips and the software platforms that make them work.

More specifically:

  • The company builds the hardware backbone that powers Artificial Intelligence (AI 人工智能) workloads
  • They’ve created a proprietary software platform called BIRENSUPA that integrates with their custom GPGPU architecture
  • Their chips handle everything from cloud-based AI model training to edge computing scenarios
  • Think of it as the specialized computing engine that makes large language models, computer vision, and other AI tasks actually run efficiently

In the AI arms race, Biren is trying to be the pick-and-shovel provider—the company that sells the tools everyone else needs to build their AI dreams.

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From First-Gen Chips to Performance Monsters: The Product Roadmap

Biren Technology GPGPU Product Matrix
Product Model Core Use Case Key Characteristics
BR106 AI Training & Inference Foundational workhorse for deep learning
BR110 Edge Computing Optimized for robotics and embedded systems
BR166 High Performance Computing Chiplet design, 2x performance of BR106

Biren’s product evolution tells an interesting story about how they’re competing against global GPU giants like NVIDIA.

Starting in 2019, the company built its first-generation GPGPU architecture and successfully launched two flagship chips:

The BR106: The Workhorse

  • Designed for both AI training and inference
  • Handles the computational heavy lifting for deep learning workloads
  • The foundation of Biren’s current product lineup

The BR110: The Edge Player

  • Biren’s first-generation edge and cloud inference chip
  • Uses the same architecture as the BR106 for consistency
  • Built for Edge Computing (Bianyuan Jisuan 边缘计算) scenarios like:
    • Industrial control systems
    • Robotics (Jiqi-ren 机器人) applications
    • Embedded devices with space and power constraints

The BR166: The Beast Mode

  • Biren’s performance flagship, using chiplet technology and advanced interconnects
  • Combines two BR106 dies for absolutely jaw-dropping performance gains
  • Doubles the performance of the BR106 across multiple dimensions:
    • Peak computing power
    • Memory capacity and bandwidth
    • Video encoding and decoding capabilities
    • Chip-to-chip interconnectivity

The BR10X architecture is where Biren really differentiates itself from competitors.

The company built this high-performance computing architecture specifically to optimize Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) and traditional AI computing kernels.

More importantly, it’s designed with forward compatibility in mind—meaning as AI paradigms evolve, Biren’s chips can adapt.

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Market Share Reality Check: The Numbers Game

Here’s where things get real about Biren’s current position in the market.

According to their prospectus filing, in 2024 Biren Technology held:

  • 0.16% market share in China’s intelligent computing chip market
  • 0.20% market share in China’s GPGPU market

That’s not a typo—we’re talking about fractions of a percent.

But here’s the upside: the Chinese intelligent computing chip market is projected to reach $50.4 billion USD by 2025.

Even if Biren captures just their projected 0.2% of that market based on their revenue run-rate, that’s ~$100 million in annual revenue opportunity.

The question isn’t whether they’re big today—they’re clearly still small.

The question is whether they can grow into that massive TAM (Total Addressable Market) before international competitors crush them or China’s other AI chip startups get there first.

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The Order Backlog That Validates Demand

Here’s what actually matters for a chip startup—do customers actually want to buy your stuff?

As of December 15, 2025, Biren Technology had:

  • 24 binding purchase orders totaling approximately ¥822 million RMB ($115 million USD)
  • Framework agreements and contracts worth another ¥1.241 billion RMB ($174 million USD)

So roughly ¥2.06 billion RMB (~$290 million USD) in committed or near-committed revenue sitting in the pipeline.

That’s validation that customers actually believe in Biren’s technology enough to sign contracts.

It’s not nothing.

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The Financial Reality: Losses Getting Worse Before They Get Better

Biren Technology Financial Summary (2022-2024)
Year Revenue (RMB million) Net Loss (RMB million) R&D Expense (RMB million)
2022 0.5 1,038 1,018
2023 62.03 1,051 886
2024 337.0 767 827

Now let’s talk about the cash situation, because here’s where startup GPU companies tell the real story.

Biren’s revenue trajectory shows rapid growth:

  • 2022: ¥500,000 RMB ($70,000 USD)
  • 2023: ¥62.03 million RMB ($8.68 million USD)
  • 2024: ¥337 million RMB ($47.18 million USD)
  • H1 2025: ¥58.90 million RMB ($8.25 million USD)

But the losses tell a different story:

  • 2022: ¥1.038 billion RMB ($145 million USD) net loss
  • 2023: ¥1.051 billion RMB ($147 million USD) net loss
  • 2024: ¥767 million RMB ($107 million USD) net loss
  • H1 2025: ¥552 million RMB ($77 million USD) net loss

That’s basically losing $100+ million per year while generating less than $50 million in revenue.

The company expects full-year 2025 losses to spike even higher, primarily due to increased R&D spending and financial costs.

This is the classic venture-backed semiconductor story: spend massively on R&D now, hope revenue catches up before you run out of cash.

Good news: they just raised nearly ¥700 million in this IPO, so they’ve got runway.

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R&D Spending: The Bet That Everything Hinges On

Want to know what Biren actually priorities?

Look at their R&D budget:

  • 2022: ¥1.018 billion RMB ($142 million USD)
  • 2023: ¥886 million RMB ($124 million USD)
  • 2024: ¥827 million RMB ($116 million USD)
  • H1 2025: ¥572 million RMB ($80 million USD)

Cumulative R&D investment: ¥3.302 billion RMB ($462 million USD)

Here’s the wild part: over 70% of their total operating expenses go to R&D in every single year.

That’s not a company cutting corners—that’s a company betting its entire future on chip architecture and software optimization.

Every engineer, every simulation, every prototype gets paid for because Biren believes that superior chip design is their only competitive moat.

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Gross Margins Are Compressing (And That’s Actually Important)

Here’s a troubling trend hiding in the financial statements:

  • 2022: 100% gross margin
  • 2023: 76.4% gross margin
  • 2024: 53.2% gross margin
  • H1 2025: 31.9% gross margin

That’s a dramatic cliff.

Why is this happening?

Biren attributes it to changes in product mix to meet specific customer requirements.

Translation: they’re building customized chips for major customers, which means lower margins but higher volume.

It’s a classic tradeoff in the chip industry—do you optimize for profit margin or do you optimize for market penetration?

Biren is choosing market penetration right now, betting they can improve margins later through scale and process optimization.

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The Tencent (Tengxun 腾讯) Connection: Winning the Software Race

Here’s a recent development that matters for Biren’s near-term prospects.

On December 30, 2025, Tencent (Tengxun 腾讯) officially open-sourced version 1.5 of its translation model.

That same evening, Biren announced something critical: their BR166M product completed “Day 0” adaptation for the Tencent-HY-MT1.5-1.8B model using the vLLM inference framework.

Why does this matter?

Because in the GPU chip business, software compatibility is everything.

A fast chip means nothing if developers can’t easily run their favorite frameworks on it.

Biren deploying support for a major model within hours instead of weeks or months signals:

  • Their chips have solid framework support
  • Their engineers understand the software optimization game
  • They can move fast enough to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving AI landscape
  • They’re already winning over major Chinese tech companies like Tencent

That’s the kind of software-hardware symbiosis that actually drives adoption in cloud computing scenarios.

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So What’s the Real Story Here?

Biren Technology’s IPO debut represents something bigger than just another GPU startup going public.

It’s a validation that China’s AI chip ambitions are being taken seriously by the market.

The numbers tell the story:

  • An 82% opening day surge isn’t normal unless the market believes something real is happening
  • Nearly ¥2 billion in signed contracts shows customers aren’t just curious—they’re buying
  • ¥3.3 billion in cumulative R&D spending proves this isn’t a quick cash grab
  • Fast software adaptation demonstrates they understand what developers actually need

That said, the challenges are real too.

Biren is still tiny in a market where NVIDIA dominates globally, margins are compressing rapidly, and losses are enormous relative to revenue.

The company has the capital now to fund the innovation.

The question is whether innovation alone is enough to survive in one of the most competitive industries on the planet.

Welcome to the GPU chip wars—and why Biren Technology’s 2026 IPO matters for China’s AI infrastructure story.


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