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Goldman's 54-million-chip 2030 forecast requires China to double domestic output every year
China's four little GPU tigers now have public prices and a 2030 demand forecast big enough to justify them. The lock-up calendar has been repricing them faster than their losses have narrowed. Enflame is the newest of them.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Shares of Shanghai Enflame Technology more than doubled on their trading debut, extending Beijing's run of public listings for the companies it is backing to replace foreign AI chips.
- None of the four so-called little GPU tigers has yet turned a sustainable profit, which the Dow Jones report describes as an overhang for investors.
- Moore Threads shed over 30% this week after its first major lock-up expiration on Monday, taking its year-to-date loss to 40%.
- MetaX, whose lock-up expires next week, slid over 25% this week as holders sold after watching Moore's fall, and is down 19% so far this year.
- Goldman Sachs analysts estimate China needs 54 million local AI chips for training and inference demand in 2030, against 1.6 million China-made chips shipped in 2025.
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Why it matters
- constraint Enflame's guided break-even can be reached by trimming the R&D that funds its next chip, so the profit shareholders want and the roadmap they are buying pull against each other.
- decision MetaX holders have days to decide whether to sell ahead of their own unlock or sit through it, with Moore Threads' week as the only evidence they have.
- exposure Revenue sourced from procurement mandates depends on those mandates staying in place, so holders of all four carry policy risk alongside product risk.
- contradiction Goldman describes a market big enough to fund four challengers. Deutsche Bank ranks all four behind Huawei in the third tier. Neither puts a number on the tigers' share of the 2030 total.
Goldman Sachs' 2030 number is 33.75 times China's 2025 domestic shipments. Five years of that works out at about 102% compound growth, so output has to roughly double every year to the end of the decade for the forecast to hold [15][16]. Goldman said the market potential will "bring healthy competition through 2030" [14]. Deutsche Bank analysts put all four tigers in the third tier of China's AI chip vendors, with Huawei leading on market presence and influence, according to Dow Jones' Sherry Qin [12][19].
The four reached markets within about a year of each other: Moore Threads and MetaX in Shanghai last year, Biren in Hong Kong early this year, Enflame now [2]. Moore Threads went into its unlock week down about 14% for 2026 and came out down 40% [17]. MetaX went into this week up about 8% and now sits 19% lower for the year [18].
Export controls and Chinese government mandates urging local tech companies to use domestic alternatives have lifted revenue at companies like Enflame, while high research-and-development costs have pushed its earnings into the red [5]. Moore and Biren narrowed losses sharply in the first half [6]. MetaX swung to a profit for the period, largely on a fair-value gain the company said was not sustainable [7]. Enflame expects to break even or turn a profit this year or the next, depending on revenue and margins [8].
Mandated demand shows up in revenue, and margin comes out of costs; the line carrying Enflame's losses is R&D [5]. The cheapest route to the break-even it guides to is a cheaper next design, and Deutsche Bank already has all four in the third tier [8][12]. What would break that reading is a half in which one of the four grows revenue and narrows losses without slowing its roadmap. Moore's and Biren's sharp first-half improvement is the closest thing on the record so far [6].
The counter-thesis has the better five-year arithmetic. If domestic output really runs about 34 times 2025 volumes by 2030 [15], a loss-making designer with a shipping product is cheap on almost any multiple of today's revenue. Biren's shares, at nearly double their listing price, are priced that way [11].
What to watch
- MetaX's lock-up expiry next week, and whether the selling matches the 30% week Moore Threads just had.
- Reported 2026 domestic AI chip shipments, and whether they show anything close to the annual doubling the 2030 forecast needs.
- Any loosening of the mandates steering Chinese tech buyers toward domestic chips.