Macquarie names top pick in Chinese AI chip stocks as sector heats up
The bank's new coverage of five domestic chip developers lands at a pivotal moment for China's semiconductor self-sufficiency push.
Macquarie initiated research coverage on five Chinese companies building chips for artificial intelligence applications.
The timing is deliberate. China’s domestic AI chip industry is navigating a combination of tailwinds: sustained government policy support, a wave of fresh IPOs, and a captive market created largely by U.S. export restrictions that have cut off access to Nvidia’s highest-end hardware.
Who’s in the race
Macquarie analyst Eugene Hsiao led the coverage initiation, focusing on companies building AI accelerators for the Chinese market. The names gaining the most attention in this space include Huawei, Cambricon, Hygon, Biren, and MetaX.
Huawei is projected to capture roughly 50% of China’s domestic AI chip market by 2026, according to Morgan Stanley data. The company has invested heavily in its Ascend chip series as a direct substitute for Nvidia’s A100 and H100 GPUs, which are now effectively off-limits under U.S. export rules.
Morgan Stanley projects China’s AI chip market will grow from $21B to $67B by 2030.
MetaX and Moore Threads both completed IPOs in late 2025, with strong market debuts. Biren and Iluvatar CoreX are reportedly planning their own public offerings in 2026.
The policy engine driving all of this
As of May 2026, nine AI chip products from companies including Huawei, Alibaba, and MetaX had received a formal “secure and reliable” certification from Chinese authorities, making them eligible for government procurement.
What this means for investors watching AI compute broadly
Protocols built around GPU-backed lending or tokenized compute access are sensitive to shifts in the global supply and pricing of AI accelerators. A scenario where China successfully scales domestic chip production could alter the economics of AI compute globally, including the decentralized layer that crypto investors have been building out.
Investors should watch how Biren and Iluvatar CoreX price their offerings relative to the late 2025 cohort, since those comparisons will set the tone for the sector’s valuation benchmarks heading into the back half of the year.