Former AMD Engineer may become a billionaire after Chinese chip IPO set to list at $5.9 billion

China is set to add another billionaire — emerging from a Chinese chipmaker — to its rich list in the span of just a few days.

Chen Weiliang left his 14-year career nearly half a decade ago, stepping down from a top executive role at Advanced Micro Devices to launch his own chip startup.

That startup — MetaX Integrated Circuits Shanghai Co. — is scheduled to list on Wednesday in Shanghai at a valuation of a massive $5.9 billion. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Chen holds 55 million shares in the company worth at least 5.8 billion yuan ($824 million) at the offer price.

The 49-year-old’s rise to near-billionaire status follows the arc of Zhang Jianzhong, founder of Moore Threads Technology Co. — a former Nvidia Corp. executive — whose net worth climbed to $4.3 billion after his company’s IPO earlier this month.

Both founders reflect the rise of a new billionaire class in China, fueled by Beijing’s drive to create a self-sufficient chip supply chain. Yet, their companies remain exposed to geopolitical pressures, heavy cash burn, intense domestic competition and hardware dependencies that could quickly test those gains.

“In the tech war between China and the US, companies in Beijing’s priority sectors are receiving support far beyond normal levels,” said Shen Meng, director at Beijing-based investment bank Chanson & Co. “Although R&D is manageable for founders with US industry experience, Chinese firms still lag significantly behind global leaders in system-level performance, ecosystems, and production.”

‘AMD Gang’

A key driver of MetaX’s rapid ascent has been its aggressive recruitment of top-tier engineering talent, allowing Chen to bypass the typical startup learning curve. Among his first hires were chief technology officers Peng Li — one of AMD’s first female Chinese scientists — and Yang Jian.

Like Moore Threads, MetaX’s IPO has also made many other people associated with the firm wealthy. Peng and Yang are both poised to see their fortunes surge to $56.7 million with the IPO.

Chen, who studied at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and completed a master’s degree in engineering at Tsinghua University, also brought in a slate of former AMD colleagues who now occupy key management roles at MetaX. They include Chen Yang, Zhou Jun and Wang Ding.

To secure this talent, Chen employed a series of pre-IPO limited partnerships, turning much of his R&D department into high-net-worth individuals. The company distributed 461 million yuan ($65.5 million) in share-based compensation to employees in 2024 alone, according to the prospectus, with the bulk of that going to key managers.

Still, more than 80% of the 870-strong workforce holds indirect stakes through shareholding platforms. At the offer price, a stake of just 0.017% is enough to mint a US dollar millionaire.

“It’s almost the only way to attract a stable candidate to leave a stable business,” said Echo Wang, Regional Director at Hays Shanghai, a tech recruitment firm. Senior talent from global giants command top-tier cash packages, and startups can usually only compete by offering attractive equity incentives to make up the difference, said Wang.

Cash Burn

The IPO places MetaX in a heated race among China’s chip ‘unicorns,’ who are scrambling to fight for the domestic market left by Western tech export controls.

Besides US chip giants like Nvidia and AMD, MetaX faces a crowded field of domestic rivals. These include Moore Threads, Huawei Technologies Co., Hygon Information Technology Co. and Cambricon Technologies Corp.

“Huawei, Hygon and Cambricon are considered to have more matured products and customer relationships,” said Matthew Deng, Consulting Director at BDA China.

MetaX is burning cash at a ferocious rate to close the gap in terms of system-level performance and production with Nvidia. From 2022 through 2024, MetaX spent over 2.2 billion yuan on R&D alone. While revenue is skyrocketing — hitting 915 million yuan in the first half of 2025, surpassing the entire previous year — profitability remains elusive. The company posted a net loss of 1.41 billion yuan in 2024. MetaX projects it will break even by 2026, a target that relies heavily on its flagship C500 chip maintaining its foothold against rivals like Huawei’s Ascend series.

Beyond the financials, the company displays a fragility common to China’s import-substitution champions: reliance on a handful of buyers. One of its largest clients in the first quarter of 2025 was H3C Technologies Co., a subsidiary of a Beijing-backed conglomerate that serves as a primary conduit for domestic chips entering government data centres.

Another risk lies in manufacturing. MetaX operates as a “fabless” chipmaker — it designs the chips but relies on third-party foundries to build them. With the US tightening restrictions on China’s access to advanced lithography, MetaX’s supply chain remains vulnerable.

“If our major suppliers experience capacity constraints or are subject to trade restrictions,” the prospectus stated, “Our ability to deliver products could be materially impaired.”