5Y News | Moore Threads Completes Series A Funding, First Domestic Full-Function GPU Successfully Developed
The Infrastructure of the AI Era
Less than a year after its founding, Moore Threads, a leading Chinese GPU company, is accelerating at breakneck speed — defining what "China speed" means in chip design. In under 300 days, it successfully developed its first domestically produced full-function GPU and announced the completion of its Series A funding round.
On November 25, Moore Threads announced it had raised 2 billion RMB in Series A financing. The round was co-led by Shanghai Guosheng Capital, 5Y Capital, and Bohai Zhongsheng Fund (under BOCI), with nine other well-known institutions joining, including CCB International, Qianhai M&A Fund, China Merchants Securities, and Hubei High-Quality Development Industry Fund. The proceeds will be used primarily for mass production of its first GPU chip, R&D of GPU SoC-related IP, and expansion of the domestic GPU ecosystem.
"Congratulations to Moore Threads on this successful fundraise. From angel round to Series A, 5Y Capital has increased our stake at every step," said Zhang Fei, partner at 5Y Capital. "We believe general-purpose GPUs are a critical component of next-generation computing platforms and among the most essential infrastructure of the AI era. The founder and core technical team at Moore Threads are an entrepreneurial group I deeply admire — ambitious in vision and strong in execution. I hope the team continues to achieve product and commercial success."
Founded in October 2020, Moore Threads is dedicated to building computing platforms for visual computing and artificial intelligence, developing world-leading GPUs with independent intellectual property, and helping China establish a domestic high-performance computing ecosystem. Moore Threads completed three funding rounds within a single year, each drawing strong support from strategic investors, state capital, and prominent financial investors. Its February 2021 round was co-led by Shenzhen Capital Group, Sequoia Capital China, and GGV Capital.
Alongside the funding announcement, Moore Threads revealed a major R&D breakthrough — the successful on-schedule development of its first domestically produced full-function GPU chip. Moore Threads has a complete hardware and software design team for modern full-function GPU architecture. The chip incorporates self-developed cores for 3D graphics computing, AI training and inference computing, high-performance parallel computing, and ultra-high-definition video encoding and decoding. Its extensive experience in GPU design, rigorous and mature technical roadmap, and deep understanding of China's GPU application market enabled Moore Threads to successfully develop its first-generation domestic full-function GPU product in less than a year — setting a new benchmark for domestic GPU development speed.
As the global digital economy rises and the metaverse era of interconnected everything approaches, the digitalization and intelligentization of the physical world is driving explosive growth in demand for massive graphics and data processing. GPU-based 3D graphics rendering, AR/VR computing, and AI computing as infrastructure for cloud, edge, and endpoint computing centers have become an unstoppable trend, and the importance of GPU localization is increasingly prominent. According to IDC statistics, China's GPU server market for data centers alone will reach $6.4 billion by 2024, with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 27% over the next five years.
Faced with such rapidly growing demand in the Chinese market, accelerating domestic GPU R&D is imperative. Based on independent innovation and intellectual property, Moore Threads focuses on designing domestic full-function GPU chips and related products, supporting diverse combined workloads including 3D high-speed graphics rendering, AI training and inference acceleration, ultra-high-definition video encoding and decoding, and high-performance scientific computing — providing high-performance, full-function GPU computing power for China's digital technology ecosystem. With an innovation-driven R&D approach and in response to today's environmental challenges, Moore Threads adheres to green innovation in GPU product design, leveraging advanced manufacturing processes and innovative energy-efficient computing architecture to achieve better GPU performance-per-watt. Meeting "dual carbon" goals, it aims to reduce computing costs and energy consumption for enterprise customers, enabling deployment of "effective computing power."
Moore Threads recognizes that ecosystem development is critical for GPU solutions and application innovation, and it is accelerating its ecosystem-building efforts, expanding its "circle of friends." Its first domestic GPU has begun adaptation with mainstream domestic CPUs and operating systems, and will collaborate with a broad range of ecosystem partners to build a "China Perfect Experience System" based on domestic technological innovation — aiming to provide the best user experience for consumer and enterprise customers. It has already established partnerships with hundreds of ecosystem partners to jointly advance co-development, performance optimization, and application innovation of domestic GPU software. The company plans to broadly apply GPU technology to key areas of digital economic development, including digital twins, industrial simulation, digital creative industries, smart energy, smart cities, smart healthcare, autonomous driving, robotics, digital humans, and biological computing.
5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Venture Capital) currently manages approximately 32 billion RMB across USD and RMB dual-currency funds. 5Y Capital seeks out, supports, and inspires lonely entrepreneurs, providing them with support from the spiritual to all operational aspects. We believe that if the "crazy" you in others' eyes begins to be believed in, the world will become a different place.
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