The gradual cooling of gains on debut day sends a clear signal 鈥?the premium for scarcity that domestic AI computing chips once enjoyed in the secondary market is steadily eroding.

On September 11, Suiren Technology officially listed on the STAR Market, opening at 410 yuan per share, a surge of 188.37% above its initial public offering price of 142.18 yuan. During the session, the stock hit an intraday high of 475 yuan, with gains extending past 234%. Based on the opening price, investors holding one lot saw paper profits of 133,900 yuan.

With this listing, four domestic AI computing chip companies 鈥?Moore Threads, MetaX, Biren Technology, and Suiren Technology 鈥?have now all gathered in the capital markets. The 鈥渞eunion鈥?took nine months, counting from Moore Threads' debut in December 2025. Yet the enthusiasm on the bourse masks a far more pressing question: once scarcity is no longer a justification for premium valuations, what will these domestic AI chip makers rely on to sustain their hefty market capitalizations?

The buzz is cooling

From application acceptance to listing approval, Suiren Technology took just 145 days. Its IPO application was accepted on January 22, approved at the listing committee on June 15, registration was granted on July 9, and it hit the market on September 11. The company issued 43.035 million shares, representing 10% of the total post-listing share capital, raising total proceeds of 6.119 billion yuan, with a listing market value of approximately 61.187 billion yuan.

The 142.18 yuan offer price makes it the third most expensive new listing on the STAR Market this year, trailing only Pinzhun Laser and Unitree Robotics. It also exceeds the A-share IPO prices of Moore Threads at 114.28 yuan and MetaX at 104.66 yuan. Retail investor demand remained intense: the preliminary online subscription multiple hit approximately 6,109.34 times, vastly exceeding the 100-times threshold that triggers a clawback mechanism. After the clawback was activated, the final online lottery rate was just 0.02455315%, with 20,657 winning allotment numbers.

The strategic placement brought in ten investors, collectively allocated 8.607 million shares. Among them, Tencent-affiliated Shanghai Qishan Investment received 1.7471 million shares, the largest allocation with the longest lock-up period of 36 months. Other participants included supply chain players such as Xiaomi, GigaDevice, ZTE, Tongfu Microelectronics, Hua Hong Group, and Shanghai Yidian, alongside long-term capital like the National Social Security Fund and the Basic Pension Insurance Fund.

That said, Suiren Technology's first-day performance was not the most spectacular. Moore Threads closed up 425.5% on its December 5 debut, while MetaX soared 693% on December 17. By contrast, Suiren Technology opened with a 188.37% gain. The sequential decline in first-day pops is itself a clear signal that the scarcity premium for domestic AI chips in the secondary market is being diluted.

The second half has just begun

The confidence behind this wave of capital-market endings is backed by a collective surge in performance. In the first half of 2026, the four AI chip champions posted revenues ranging from 1 billion to 2 billion yuan each: Moore Threads generated 1.736 billion yuan, up 147.42% year-on-year; MetaX brought in 1.324 billion yuan, a 44.67% increase; Biren Technology recorded 1.236 billion yuan, up a staggering 1997.6%; and Suiren Technology delivered 1.120 billion yuan, a 279.08% jump. Combined, the four generated approximately 5.416 billion yuan in revenue.

However, the combined revenue of the four champions still trails Cambricon at 5.996 billion yuan. To date, none of the four has achieved profitability. So what will support their valuations? The answer lies in the supply-demand gap. According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, domestic AI computing demand grew 417% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, while effective supply expanded by just 128%, widening the shortfall.

The explosion on the demand side is even more dramatic. Data from the National Data Administration shows daily token call volumes in China surged from roughly 100 billion in early 2024 to 140 trillion by March 2026 鈥?a 1,400-fold increase in just 26 months. Downstream capital expenditure is accelerating in tandem: Alibaba has pledged no less than 380 billion yuan in AI and cloud infrastructure investment over the next three years, while Tencent reported capital expenditure of 31.94 billion yuan in Q1 2026, with plans for significantly higher AI-related spending across the full year.

"Against the backdrop of a widening supply-demand gap in domestic AI computing and the rigid demand for import substitution, the four champions have entered a phase of rapid revenue growth, yet the inflection point for profitability remains to be seen," noted Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences.

From being able to build chips to actually generating profits 鈥?the second half of the game for domestic AI chips is only just getting started.