MetaX now makes about 15 times Moore Threads' core profit on similar GPU sales, but a RMB1.34 billion nine-month operating cash outflow shows growth still consumes cash.
MetaX, the Shanghai GPU designer listed on the STAR Market, more than quadrupled its quarterly revenue as Chinese buyers kept ordering domestic AI chips. Third-quarter revenue rose 367.12% from a year earlier to RMB1.5 billion, and net profit excluding non-recurring items reached RMB308 million, according to results released on the evening of October 30 and reported by Jiemian. It was the company’s second straight quarter of core profit.
Headline net profit attributable to shareholders tells a different story for the quarter: just RMB26.53 million. The difference of about RMB281 million points to non-recurring losses in the third quarter, but none of the published reports itemized them. For the first nine months, revenue rose 128.45% to RMB2.824 billion and net profit reached RMB639 million, up from a loss a year earlier.
The figures arrive as investors dump the same chip stocks they bid up a year ago. MetaX’s shares have halved in value since July, Reuters reported on October 26, part of a broad selloff in China’s AI and chip stocks.
Third-quarter sales outran the whole first half
MetaX’s third-quarter revenue of RMB1.5 billion was larger than its sales for the whole first half, when it booked about RMB1.32 billion. Trade publication Xinzhixun said downstream customers kept buying GPUs and services, and that core profit rose from about RMB54 million in the second quarter to RMB308 million in the third.
Margins held up as volume grew. Gross profit for the nine months was RMB1.553 billion, a gross margin of 54.99%, and research and development spending was RMB828 million, according to IT Home. Core profit for the nine months was RMB259 million, against RMB639 million of headline net profit, so non-recurring gains made up most of the year’s reported earnings.
Those gains appear tied to investments. When MetaX issued a profit forecast on October 15, it attributed the turnaround to higher revenue and increased investment in supply-chain companies, IT Home reported. That forecast put nine-month net profit at RMB587 million to RMB717 million and revenue at RMB2.541 billion to RMB3.106 billion; the actual figures landed inside both ranges.
MetaX earns more from each yuan of sales than Moore Threads
The closest comparison is Moore Threads, which reported a day earlier. Its third-quarter revenue of RMB1.55 billion was slightly larger than MetaX’s, but its core profit was RMB20.07 million, and its headline net profit RMB49.26 million, according to Yicai. On core profit, MetaX made roughly 15 times as much from similar sales.
Neither company has turned growth into cash yet. MetaX’s operating cash flow was negative RMB1.338 billion for the nine months, though the third-quarter outflow narrowed to RMB41.24 million, IT Home reported. The company had total assets of RMB14.844 billion and a debt-to-asset ratio of 6.15% at the end of September. Its December 2025 listing, at RMB104.66 a share, opened 567.88% higher on the first day, Yicai reported in its listing-day report. Its founding team, including Chen Weiliang, previously worked at AMD.
Product timing helps explain the jump. Xinzhixun reported that MetaX’s Xiyun C600 GPU entered mass production in May, and that the company launched its Xijing S600 superpod system, which scales to clusters of 10,000 cards, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in July. MetaX also completed same-day support for Zhipu’s GLM, Alibaba’s Qwen and Tencent’s Hunyuan models, and is running a 10,000-card cluster with partner Moxing Intelligence. MetaX has also bought into a model developer: a MetaX unit holds RMB100 million, about 0.08%, of Beijing Kling, the company behind Kuaishou’s Kling AI video models, according to Kuaishou’s October 30 filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Staff share awards depend on RMB6 billion of sales in 2027
The clearest marker of MetaX’s ambitions is its 2026 restricted share plan. According to Xinzhixun, the first grant vests only if revenue reaches at least RMB6 billion in 2027, at least RMB15 billion cumulatively over 2027 and 2028, and at least RMB30 billion over 2027 to 2029. Even the first target is roughly double the RMB2.824 billion booked in the first nine months of 2026.
EastFrontier reported in August that MetaX had turned profitable as demand for domestic AI chips built. The full quarterly report’s breakdown of the third-quarter non-recurring losses, and whether the C600 and S600 lift fourth-quarter revenue above RMB1.5 billion, will show whether MetaX’s core profit is becoming a trend.