Retail investors bid 6,109 times over for a chipmaker that lost 1.2 billion yuan in 2025

Two of the three price figures in the Forkast account agree with each other and the third does not. A close of about 435 yuan against a 142.18 yuan offer price is a multiple of 3.06, a first-day gain near 206 percent ^[2][1]. The 179 percent the article reports would have put the close near 397 yuan ^[2]. The valuation pair points the same way as the higher figure: $28 billion against the $9.1 billion implied at offer is a ratio of 3.08 ^[3][3]. In my view the closing price and the market-cap pair are the numbers that reconcile, and 179 percent is the loose one.

Enflame is one of four firms the article groups as China's "GPU dragons", with Cambricon, MetaX and Moore Threads ^[5]. At 142.18 yuan, its 6.12 billion yuan raise is about 43 million shares ^[4]. The dollar figure implies roughly 6.71 yuan to the dollar, which puts the $9.1 billion offer valuation near 61 billion yuan and about 430 million shares in issue ^[5][6]. Enflame therefore sold on the order of a tenth of itself, and the proceeds are earmarked for R&D and industrialisation of its fifth- and sixth-generation training and inference chips ^[6][7]. In dollars, the $912 million is about 4 percent more than the $875 million raised by Positron AI, one US inference company working through commodity memory ^[12][7].

Forkast describes the subscription figure as "not a standard valuation metric; it is a raw demand signal from a market desperate for exposure to the domestic AI hardware supply chain" ^[10]. The first half of that is accurate. A multiple of 6,109 counts subscription orders against the retail tranche, and turning it into a sum of money committed would require the size of that tranche ^[4].

The ordering claim rests on two dates. Enflame listed on September 11, 2026, and DeepSeek plans to file in the second quarter of 2027 on the same exchange, with Tencent a lead strategic backer of both companies ^[1][8][9]. Forkast reads that sequence as the STAR Market treating domestic silicon as a sovereign strategic asset ^[11]. The dates on their own are equally consistent with one company being ready to list before another was. One figure does support the pricing half of the thesis: DeepSeek's planned $74 billion sits about 4 percent above the $71 billion at which secondary markets already mark it ^[8][8], while Enflame's first day put close to triple the offer price on a company that lost 1.2 billion yuan in 2025 and has guided to break-even or profit somewhere in 2026 or 2027 ^[6]. The article does not say whether the $74 billion is DeepSeek's valuation or the sum it intends to raise ^[8].