Chips are the heart, and computing power is the national strength. As the first tier of "Chinese chips", Shanghai has a population of 2% and computing power accounts for one eighth of the country's total. At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, a "chip" force was fully launched along the Huangpu River: from general-purpose GPUs to AI big models, from bottom to top applications, the capital market intensively launched a new "Shanghai technology sector", becoming a beautiful scenery. Behind the hustle and bustle is the "code of progress" jointly written by the two leading industries of integrated circuits and artificial intelligence in Shanghai: the revenue scale of the integrated circuit industry will exceed 488 billion yuan by 2025, doubling in five years; The scale of the large-scale artificial intelligence industry is expected to exceed 550 billion yuan, with a growth rate of over 30%, setting a new record. A batch of vibrant "little dragons" and "little tigers" are growing rapidly, driving the new quality productivity to leap forward and flourish, full of spring vitality. The development of artificial intelligence, especially the rise of large models, has driven a significant increase in demand for computing power as the "chip" race has reached new speeds. According to Frost&Sullivan, the Chinese general GPU market is rapidly expanding, with shipments reaching 1.6 million pieces in 2024 and a compound annual growth rate of 72.8% from 2022 to 2024. It is expected that shipments will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 33% from 2025 to 2029. In addition, domestic general-purpose GPU products have increased from 8.3% in 2022 to 17.4% in 2024, and are expected to exceed 50% by 2029. As the first new stock to be listed on the Hong Kong stock market in 2026, Boren Technology has not only become the "first GPU stock" in the Hong Kong stock market, but also the largest new stock to be issued since the establishment of the 18C chapter special technology company listing mechanism in the Hong Kong stock market. Combined with the recent listing of Tiantian Zhixin on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Muxi Shares on the A-share Science and Technology Innovation Board with a full moon, and Suiyuan Technology's IPO acceptance on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, "Shanghai Chip" demonstrates its strong momentum. It is reported that in the first half of 2025, Tiantian Zhixin will deliver approximately 15000 general-purpose GPUs, achieving dual mass production of inference chips and training chips, approaching the level of approximately 17000 chips for the whole year of 2024. The products and solutions have covered fields such as finance, healthcare, and transportation, promoting over 900 deployments and applications. Among the three major product lines of Muxi Corporation, multiple chips that focus on inference and training have entered the stage of mass production. Huang Xiangjun, Vice President of Research and Development at Muxi Corporation, stated that due to the long development cycle of chips and the fast iteration of application computing loads, there are naturally mismatched genes between the two. Therefore, at the source, chips must have sufficient universality to adapt to the diverse computing needs that keep up with the times. At the symposium held on January 19th, experts, entrepreneurs, and representatives from fields such as science, education, culture, health, and sports, Yan Junjie, founder and CEO of MiniMax Technology, attended and delivered a speech. Just 10 days before the symposium, this company, which has only been established for 4 years, also knocked on the door to the capital market. At Xiyu Technology, the average age of 385 employees is "post-95s", the average age of directors is only 32 years old, and R&D personnel account for over 70%. They focus on developing multimodal general artificial intelligence technologies such as text, speech, and vision, providing services to over 212 million individual users in more than 200 countries and regions, enterprise customers and developers in over 100 countries and regions, with overseas revenue accounting for over 70%. By 2025 alone, the MiniMax video model will be upgraded from the Video 01 series to the Hailuo 02 series, ranking among the top two globally. The two generations of video models not only help users generate over 590 million videos, but also continuously break through in complex dynamics, instruction adherence, and aesthetic performance. For us, models are products. ”Yan Yijun, Vice President of Xiyu Technology, said that we will not focus our energy on building super apps. What we value most is the universality and generalization of large models. Although big models can achieve miracles with great power, new paths can also be explored through breakthrough algorithms. The company has spent a total of $500 million from its establishment to September 2025, which is about 1% of OpenAI's expenses during the same period. In just over a month, five artificial intelligence hardcore companies have landed in the capital market in Shanghai, becoming the highly anticipated "Shanghai sector". The sound of the gong that increases the gold content and goes public with "core" content is not the final chapter, but the prelude to higher-level development. On January 21st, Shanghai released its economic data for 2025, with the annual regional gross domestic product exceeding 5.67 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.4% at constant prices. Among them, the output value of integrated circuit manufacturing and artificial intelligence manufacturing increased by 15.1% and 13.6% respectively. In addition, in the latest ranking of the "Top 100 Cities with Comprehensive Competitiveness in the Global Integrated Circuit Industry" by the World Integrated Circuit Association, Shanghai ranks fourth globally and first domestically. Tang Wenkan, Director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, stated that behind these impressive achievements, it is inseparable from the accumulation and development of over 1200 integrated circuit companies, nearly 400 large-scale artificial intelligence enterprises, and hundreds of thousands of industrial talents. At present, Shanghai has established an integrated circuit industry chain system that advances in parallel and supports each other throughout the entire industry chain. It has cultivated a number of leading enterprises in segmented fields such as chip design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, equipment/materials, EDA/IP, including 35 companies listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, ranking first in China. It is worth noting that some AI chip companies with innovative routes are active and regarded as highly promising "stars of tomorrow" in the industry. Xizhi Technology is such a company, founded in 2017 by a group of doctoral students who graduated from MIT and returned to China. During his PhD studies, founder and CEO Shen Yichen published a cover article in the international journal Nature Photon. He found that traditional electronic chips would encounter physical limitations when processing AI computing, and could not meet the growing demand in the future, so he proposed using photons as a substitute. After continuous product development and iteration, in 2025, the company launched its first optoelectronic hybrid computing acceleration card that supports scientific computing and complex commercial algorithms. At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in the same year, the company also unveiled its first optical interconnect optical switch GPU supernode solution. Sometimes innovation is overwhelming, and the reason for taking a different path is because they have blocked the path of 'copying homework' and instead stimulated our creativity. ”Shen Yichen said that it is predicted that in the next 3 to 5 years, the proportion of optical chips in data centers will reach over 30%. From "blooming at multiple points" to "blooming in a hundred flowers", we have entered the first large-scale model innovation ecological community in China, the "Model Speed Space", where the speed of "evolution" is so fast that it is measured in days. Over the past two years since its establishment, it has attracted more than 200 AI companies to settle in, driving the gathering of over 1500 AI companies in Xuhui District, including about 800 large model enterprises, accounting for 60% of the city's large model filing volume. Zhang Yun, Deputy General Manager of "Model Speed Space", said that every time she is asked about the number of companies, she takes a look at the latest statistics, afraid of not keeping up with the pace. Nowadays, "going up and down the stairs is upstream and downstream" and "neighbors are partners" have become daily here, and innovation vitality continues to surge. Newly settled enterprises often have to "wait in line". As one of the first batch of settled enterprises, Wuwen Xinqiong focuses on artificial intelligence infrastructure. Through the core technological advantages of "diversity and heterogeneity, software and hardware collaboration", different chips can work together to reduce computing power costs and make AI applications more accessible. This technology is like when everyone used to speak dialects and communication costs were high, but now it has been converted to Mandarin, "said Xia Lixue, co-founder and CEO of Wuwen Xinqiong. Compared to some OPC (one person company) and 20 to 30 person teams in the "rapid growth stage" of enterprises in the "incubation period", Wuwen Xinqiong currently has more than 200 employees and has become the largest enterprise in the "mold speed space", regarded as a "graduation period" type, entering the next important industrial stage. It is not accidental to treat "chip related matters" as a phenomenon level "listing relay race". The reporter found that on the path of these enterprises' growth, Shanghai's unique strategic deployment and diverse ecological construction are reflected everywhere, with both "being prepared for the future" and "providing timely assistance". Biren Technology is the first direct investment project of Shanghai Guotou Leading Artificial Intelligence Industry Mother Fund. In March 2025, Shanghai Guotou Leading Artificial Intelligence Industry Mother Fund jointly invested in Boren Technology with several well-known investment institutions and industry capital, with a total amount of hundreds of millions of yuan. As the main platform for Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Investment, Shanghai Guotou has established angel VC、PE、 Mother Fund, S Fund CVC、 The fund matrix, including merger and acquisition funds, has established three leading industry parent funds and future industry funds with a scale of 105 billion yuan, forming a long-term support mechanism for core technology breakthroughs, industry chain organization, and achievement transformation. Dai Minmin, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and President of Shanghai State owned Capital Investment Co., Ltd., stated that we do not pursue the compression of R&D investment by enterprises to cater to the listing window, but rather match the financing rhythm that is suitable for technology iteration and capacity ramp up based on the long-term characteristics of GPU R&D. When Weiren Technology faces relevant changes and challenges, we not only jointly lead the investment, but also rely on the state-owned asset platform to connect multiple resources for it, ensuring the continuity of enterprise R&D investment and avoiding sacrificing long-term technological routes for short-term cash flow. Liu Guang'an, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Shanghai International Group Asset Management Co., Ltd., also stated that the importance of building a modern industrial system is very obvious in the "15th Five Year Plan" proposal. He believes that future investment cannot be limited to linear thinking investment exit, but should face technological innovation, industrial upgrading, and the development of the real economy with a more systematic thinking. Shen Yichen, founder of Xizhi Technology, admitted that a major factor in choosing to start a business in Shanghai is the good industrial ecology. He even "kicked" partners on the field through a "semiconductor football group" in Zhangjiang. But what impressed him the most was that the government departments were very "attentive" in their work: as innovative products require the first pilot customer to eat the crab, but the domestic industry is relatively conservative about chip products, Shanghai not only recognizes them, but also tries its best to connect with trial scenarios, which plays a crucial role in early product iteration. At present, Shanghai has formed a differentiated development pattern of "one east and one west, one soft and one hard", focusing on the construction of two artificial intelligence innovation towns, Pudong Zhangjiang and Xuhui Beiyang, to create a development environment of "low innovation cost and high intelligence density" through "east-west linkage". Two small towns have gathered more than 300 artificial intelligence enterprises and over 6000 innovative talents through the "chain leader traction" and "investment incubation linkage" models, creating an innovative application cluster area that enables individuals to truly use AI technology for entrepreneurship. Facing the "15th Five Year Plan", Shanghai will maintain strategic determination, continue to be a "pioneer" and "vanguard", further focus on innovation breakthroughs in the entire industry chain, accelerate the cultivation of leading enterprises, high-level talent attraction, and full cycle service guarantees, continuously improve the ecological system of industrial innovation and development, and accelerate the transition to world-class industrial clusters. (New Society)