What Biren Technology Is and What It Does
Biren Technology is a Chinese company headquartered in Shanghai that specializes in designing chips for artificial intelligence. It was founded in 2019 by people including Zhang Wen, the former president of SenseTime, and Jiao Guofang, who previously worked at Qualcomm and Huawei. The company focuses on developing general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs) and intelligent computing systems used for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. These chips help process enormous amounts of data, which is crucial for training and deploying artificial intelligence models in data centers, telecommunications, and financial services.
Biren is striving to create domestic alternatives to American technologies because it faces restrictions from the United States. In October 2023, Washington added it to the Entity List, limiting its access to certain technologies. Nevertheless, Biren continues to work on its products and plans to invest most of the money raised through its stock market listing in research and development. Its chips are already used in the intelligent computing centers of major Chinese operators such as China Mobile and China Telecom.
Biren's Products
Biren has two main products: the BR100 chip and the BR104 chip. Both are general-purpose graphics processing units designed for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. The BR100 chip attracted attention in 2022 when the company claimed that its performance matched that of advanced processors from the American company Nvidia. These chips support the training and inference of large language models (LLMs), meaning they help train artificial intelligence on enormous datasets and then deploy it quickly in practice.
The company uses its own GPGPU architecture and BIRENSUPA software, which optimizes performance for various tasks. Biren's products are deployed in data centers, where they handle complex computations for artificial intelligence. For example, the BR100 is known for its ability to handle advanced machine learning thanks to a specialized design that enables rapid data processing.
Spectacular Debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange
Biren Technology's shares debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 2, 2026, and immediately became a hit. The opening price was HK$35.70 (about CZK 105), the shares reached an intraday high of HK$42.88 (about CZK 126), and closed at HK$34.46 (about CZK 101). This represents a 76% increase over the offering price of HK$19.60 (about CZK 58). A total of 284.8 million shares were sold, raising HK$5.58 billion (about CZK 16.4 billion) for the company.
This success exceeded expectations—demand from institutional investors was nearly 26 times the number of shares available, while retail investors oversubscribed by about 2,348 times. Biren thus became the third most actively traded stock on the exchange that day, with turnover of HK$5.52 billion (about CZK 16.2 billion) across 150.7 million shares.
Major Significance for China
This debut kicked off 2026 for the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where 114 new listings took place in 2025, raising $36.5 billion (about CZK 850 billion). Biren is part of a wave of Chinese artificial intelligence and chip companies seeking funding for growth. For example, Baidu's Kunlunxin filed for a listing on January 1, 2026. Biren plans to use 85% of the funds raised for research and expanding production.
According to Winston Ma, an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law and former head of the North American office of China's sovereign wealth fund CIC, Chinese artificial intelligence startups are going public faster thanks to government support and corporate demand. Li He of the law firm Davis Polk, who worked on several similar IPOs, including Biren's, emphasizes that investors see great potential in artificial intelligence. Alex Zhou of Qiming Venture Partners described the listing as a key stage in the company's growth.
Sources: reuters.com and theinformation.com
