Why you should know Moore Threads – China's challenger to Nvidia
The Chinese chip start-up Moore Threads soared more than 500 percent on its first trading day in Shanghai. It is the spearhead of a new generation of Chinese AI-chip makers preparing to challenge Nvidia's CUDA lock-in.
Have you heard of Moore Threads? No? Then it’s time to change that. In Shanghai the Chinese start-up just pulled off one of the most spectacular IPOs of the year – more than 500 percent up on the first trading day. Moore Threads is the spearhead of a new generation of AI-chip companies preparing to challenge Nvidia.
What it’s about
Shares in the Chinese chip maker Moore Threads jumped by as much as 502 percent in their Shanghai debut, closing the day at +425 percent. According to Bloomberg, that was one of the strongest first trading days for an IPO above one billion dollars since China’s 2019 listing reforms. The context: Beijing is pushing technological self-reliance hard. Since the US has put export restrictions on Nvidia chips, Chinese firms are meant to take on the world market from inside.
Who is behind Moore Threads
The company was founded in 2020 by Zhang Jianzhong, the former head of Nvidia in China. Since then it has set a striking pace: four generations of GPUs to market readiness, its own software ecosystem, marquee partners. Chinese tech giants Tencent and ByteDance backed the funding rounds. Moore Threads benefits substantially from political support – its admission to Shanghai’s Star Market came strikingly fast, even though the company posted losses of more than 700 million yuan in the first nine months of 2025.
Why this gets dangerous for CUDA
The really interesting target for Moore Threads isn’t only the hardware. With its MUSA platform, the company is building an alternative to Nvidia’s CUDA – the programming environment that has, for years, locked in Nvidia’s lead over the rest of the world. If developers can use a Chinese GPU ecosystem without rewriting their software, Nvidia loses its most important moat. Alongside Moore Threads, Biren, Iluvatar CoreX and MetaX – the so-called “Four Little Dragons” – are working on the same catch-up.
What this means for the West
The balance of power in AI hardware could shift faster than many in Silicon Valley assume. Nvidia is still ahead, but the technological gap is closing. If China wins the race for high-performance AI chips, a parallel AI universe will emerge – with its own hardware, its own software, its own application areas. For German and European companies this becomes a strategic question: who will be your future supplier, customer, partner? And who is left out because they leaned too heavily on US products?
I wrote the full analysis with Martin Benninghoff for Handelsblatt. This is a first impression.