[News] Chinese AI Chip Unicorns Enflame, MetaX Unveil Next-Gen Chips Shortly After NVIDIA’s H20 Return

Just days after NVIDIA made the announcement to resume H20 sales in China in mid-July, local AI chip unicorns rushed to make their mark. On July 27, Enflame and MetaX unveiled their latest flagship processors at the World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, according to EE Times China and eastmoney.com.

Enflame Unveils 4th-Gen AI Chip L600

The reports suggest that Enflame’s L600, its fourth-generation AI chip, are designed for both training and inference of large models. With 144GB on-chip memory, 3.6TB/s bandwidth, and FP8 support, the chip is reportedly designed to boost training speed while slashing costs.

As noted by eastmoney, before launching the L600, Enflame had already developed and released four chips spanning three generations. The company reportedly released its first chip in 2020, followed by second-gen training and inference chips in 2022. The third-gen S60, launched in 2024, has already shipped 70,000 units, according to EE Times China.

According to eastmoney, Enflame, founded in 2018, took a key step toward going public in August 2024 by filing for IPO counseling with the Shanghai Securities Regulatory Bureau, starting its A-share listing process. Notably, the report also points out that Enflame is backed by China’s Big Fund (2022 investment), along with major investors such as Tencent and Meitu.

MetaX Debuts C600 with HBM3e

On the other hand, EE Times China reveals that MetaX also debuted its C600 chip at WAIC. As highlighted by the report, the chip is equipped with HBM3e memory, while boosts its capacity to 144GB.

According to the report and MetaX’s prospectus, MetaX launched its C600 project in February 2024 with 1.37 billion yuan in funding, targeting small-scale production by Q4. The company is simultaneously developing its next-gen C700 series, supported by 2.04 billion yuan, with pilot testing scheduled for Q2 2026, the report notes. By March 2025, MetaX had reportedly sold over 25,000 GPUs.

It is worth noting that the competition among China’s AI chip firms has been heating up lately. As EE Times highlights, on June 30, both MetaX and rival Moore Threads had their STAR Market IPO applications accepted. Beijing-based Moore Threads seeks to raise 8 billion yuan, while Shanghai’s MetaX targets 3.9 billion yuan in their respective public offerings, according to The Economic Times.

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