Alibaba reportedly lining up AI chip IPO after wave of Chinese offerings

By Steve Goldstein

Alibaba shares were climbing in early Thursday trade.

Alibaba shares were rallying on Thursday after a report the Chinese tech giant may float its chipmaking unit called T-Head.

Alibaba shares (BABA) (HK:9988) rose 5% in early trade in New York as Bloomberg reported it will restructure its unit into a standalone business with partial employee ownership, as a first step toward an IPO.

MetaX Integrated Circuits (CN:688802) and Moore Threads (CN:688795) are among the offerings that have encountered strong demand from Chinese investors.

T-Head, founded in 2018, produces an AI inference chip called the Hanguang 800 that the company says is used in some of its other divisions, including Alibaba Cloud, Tmall and Alimama.

Bloomberg reported that T-Head last year signed a contract with China Unicom.

Alibaba has its own ChatGPT-like AI large language model called Qwen, that is the most downloaded open-source model.

-Steve Goldstein

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