Chinese Chipmakers Become Billionaires Without Turning a Profit

(Bloomberg) -- Shanghai Enflame Technology Co. has fewer than 900 employees, one major customer, and has never turned a profit since the Chinese computer chip manufacturer began in 2018.

That hasn't stopped founders Zhao Lidong and Zhang Yalin from becoming billionaires as investors hungry for artificial-intelligence bets pour money into the firm and overlook multiple hurdles to growth. Outside of the duo, Tencent Holdings Ltd is the biggest shareholder and also the company's biggest client.

Enflame's shares soared as much as 234% on their first day of trading on Friday in Shanghai, bringing Zhao and Zhang's individual fortunes to $2.5 billion each. The two co-founders are subject to lengthy lockup periods and have to meet certain targets before they can cash out.

Enflame didn't respond to requests for comment.

The windfall is another illustration of how initial public offerings have created enormous wealth for a cohort of Chinese executives tied to AI. The founders of Moore Threads Technology Co. and MetaX Integrated Circuits Co., two of Enflame's local competitors, also saw their personal wealth surge after going public while their companies were firmly in the red. Enflame's listing was similarly oversubscribed, even as it faces supply chain bottlenecks, competition from global rivals such as Nvidia Corp. and geopolitical uncertainties that have led to multiple quarters of losses.

Zhao and Zhang worked at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. before starting Enflame, named after a Chinese mythical character credited with inventing fire. Zhao spent two decades in Silicon Valley and served as a vice president at state-backed Tsinghua Unigroup in Beijing, while Zhang rose through AMD's Shanghai research center to run its core chip development.

From the beginning, the co-founders sought to avoid direct competition with Nvidia's general-purpose graphics processing units. Unlike other Chinese companies, they chose to develop an alternative type of chip designed to operate outside Nvidia's ecosystem.

Chinese AI hardware companies like Enflame are benefiting from the country's rapid data center boom. A smaller rival to Huawei Technologies Co. and Moore Threads, Enflame's success is closely tied to Tencent, which is ramping up AI capacity and continues to require massive computing to support WeChat and other services. The tech giant holds a 20% stake in Enflame and generated nearly 84% of Enflame's 990 million yuan ($138 million) in revenue in 2025.