[News] China's AI Chip Unicorn Enflame, Metax announces next-generation chips shortly after Nvidia's H20 returns

A few days after Nvidia announced that it would resume H20 sales in China in mid-July, local AI chip unicorns quickly made their mark. On July 27th, Enflame and Metax unveiled their latest flagship processors at the World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai. EE Times China and eastmoney.com.

Enflame announces the L600 4th generation AI chip

The report suggests that the Enflame L600, a fourth-generation AI chip, is designed for both training and inference on large-scale models. With 144GB of on-chip memory, 3.6TB/s bandwidth and FP8 support, CHIP is reportedly designed to increase training speeds while reducing costs.

As Eastmoney pointed out, before launching the L600, Enflame had already developed and released four chips ranging from three generations. The company reportedly released its first chip in 2020 and released a second-generation training and reasoning chip in 2022. The third-generation S60, released in 2024, has already shipped 70,000 units according to EE Times China.

According to Eastmoney, Enflame, founded in 2018, took an important step towards publishing by submitting IPO counseling with the Shanghai Securities Regulation Authority in August 2024 and launching an A-Share listing process. In particular, the report also points out that Enflame is supported by China's major fund (2022 investment) along with major investors such as Tencent and Meitu.

Metax will debut the C600 with the HBM3E

Meanwhile, EE Times China reveals that Metax has also debuted its C600 chip with WAIC. As highlighted in the report, the chip is equipped with HBM3E memory, but its capacity is 144GB.

According to the report and Metax prospectus, Metax launched the C600 project in February 2024, raising 1.37 billion yuan financing, targeting small-scale production by the fourth quarter. At the same time, the company is developing the next-generation C700 series, supported by 2.04 billion yuan, which is scheduled for pilot testing in the second quarter of 2026, the report says. By March 2025, Metax reportedly sold over 25,000 GPUs.

It is noteworthy that competition among Chinese AI chip companies has been intensifying recently. As the EE Times highlights, on June 30, both Metax and rival Moores Red accepted the IPO application in the Star Market. Beijing-based Moores Red is looking to raise 8 billion yuan, while Shanghai Metax targets 3.9 billion yuan at each public offering price. The Economy Era.

read more

(Photo credit: Freepik)