One year after DeepSeek upended the U.S. markets, investors are bracing for what could be the next moment of reckoning out of China: A rapid and coordinated push to scale home-grown Nvidia rivals for artificial intelligence chips.
In just the past two months, four startups, dubbed China's "four dragons," have already gone public or filed to: Moore Threads, MetaX, Biren, and Enflame.
All four help advance Beijing's broader strategy to beef up its domestic hardware stack and reduce reliance on the U.S.
Meanwhile, established chip firms like Huawei and Cambricon are scaling quickly.
At its annual Connect conference in September, Huawei outlined a three-year plan to overtake Nvidia.
The tech giant has the experience to make it happen, having built up its global telecoms business, taking smartphone share from Apple inside China, and risen to the top tier of China's cloud market in just a few years.