China’s Economic Slump Isn’t Stopping a Billionaire Boom in AI Chips

China's deepening real estate crisis has undermined household wealth and undermined the fortunes of some biggest tycoons — but a new class of billionaires in the age of artificial intelligence is growing rapidly.

This year's outstanding winners came from China. red-hot AI chip sector.

On Wednesday, shares of MetaX Integrated Circuits Shanghai, a GPU startup founded by former AMD executives, soared 755% in its first day of trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's tech-heavy STAR market before closing up about 700%.

This surge has turned its chairman and co-founder Chen Weiliang into one of China's fastest-growing tech tycoons. Chen's stake in MetaX is worth about $6.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Other early insiders also saw stunning gains on paper.

MetaX's other two co-founders and co-chief technology officers, Peng Li and Yang Jian, now own hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock after the blockbuster debut, according to Bloomberg calculations.

The onslaught of artificial intelligence in China

Chen's rise follows that of another GPU entrepreneur, Zhang Jianzhong, founder and CEO of Moore Threads Technology.

Earlier this month, Zhang's net worth jumped to $4.3 billion after his company's successful IPO, continuing a wave of investor enthusiasm for domestic semiconductor players.

The richest figure in China's AI chip industry is Chen Tianshi, the company's co-founder and CEO. Cambricon Technologies — a company that retailers have dubbed “China's Nvidia.”

Cambricon's Chen is now worth $22.5 billion, making him the country's 16th richest person on Bloomberg's list. He is the 115th richest person in the world.

These new fortunes reflect a dramatic shift in investor sentiment.

Shares of Chinese artificial intelligence and semiconductor makers fell sharply after the introduction of China's DeepSeek-R1 artificial intelligence model in January. The model has helped fuel growth in local tech companies and pushed the Hang Seng Tech Index to rise more than 20% this year.

Washington's tightening of controls on exports of Nvidia's cutting-edge chips has also contributed to the boom.

Such restrictions on high-end artificial intelligence processors have blocked China's access to the latest American equipment and forced Beijing to rely more heavily on domestic suppliers..

However, China's new AI billionaires are still far from the top of the country's wealth rankings. The upper echelon is still dominated by longtime tycoons.

In first place is Zhong Shanshan, The low-key bottled water magnate behind Nongfu Spring is worth $68.1 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Pony Ma, co-founder and CEO of Tencent, is in second place with $66.5 billion in revenue (up 38% this year), while ByteDance co-founder Zhang Yiming is in third place with $65.2 billion.