This Wednesday, Nvidia’s shares made a slight comeback, showing resilience despite growing concerns about its competitors in the U.S. and China.
The stock price ticked up by 0.2%, reaching $178.11. However, it has faced a squeeze of 4.7% over the past month due to ongoing uncertainty around selling its processors in China and Google’s emergence with its own tensor processing units as a viable alternative.
In the backdrop of this competitive landscape, China’s MetaX Integrated Circuits made a splash by taking advantage of Nvidia’s constrained presence in China. They launched an initial public offering on Wednesday, which saw shares skyrocket almost 700% from an opening price of 104.66 yuan ($14.86), reaching 820.90 yuan by the end of trading.
This IPO was a financial success, pulling in 4.20 billion yuan (around $596.4 million) in gross proceeds. MetaX, located in Shanghai, was co-founded by ex-employees of AMD, Nvidia’s long-standing competitor.
MetaX isn’t alone in this race. Several Chinese chip companies are gearing up to take advantage of Nvidia’s absence in the AI chip market. Earlier this month, Moore Threads saw its shares jump more than fivefold during their IPO, while Cambricon Technologies has roughly doubled its value this year. Nevertheless, these companies still trail Nvidia by several generations when it comes to technology.
Back in the U.S., Nvidia’s challenges could be exacerbated by potential threats from Amazon’s proprietary AI processors. According to a report from tech news site the Information, OpenAI is reportedly in discussions to utilize Amazon’s Trainium chips as part of an impending partnership, which could lead to an investment of around $10 billion from Amazon in the ChatGPT developer.
As of now, Amazon and OpenAI have not publicly commented on these developments. It’s worth noting that Barron’s parent company, News Corp, has a content-licensing arrangement with OpenAI.
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