Heart Capital Congratulates MetaX on STAR Market Listing: Where the Heart Leads, the Path Follows | HeartStar PORTFOLIO

On December 17, 2025, MetaX (688802.SH), a leading domestic high-performance GPU company, officially listed on the STAR Market. As one of MetaX's earliest institutional investors, Heart Capital made its resolute bet five years ago. This successful IPO marks not only a milestone in MetaX's development, but also a new phase for domestic GPU chips — moving beyond "proof of concept" toward scale and commercialization.

Yan Han, founding partner of Heart Capital, attended the listing ceremony in person to congratulate MetaX: "Congratulations, Weiliang! Congratulations to MetaX on this successful listing! As an early investor, we're deeply gratified to see MetaX's technology gain market recognition. This is a crucial step for domestic GPUs, from technology validation to industrial deployment. The IPO is a new starting point. We look forward to MetaX continuing to build China's computing foundation with steady, far-reaching vision."

Yan Han, founding partner of Heart Capital, and Weiliang Chen, founder and chairman of MetaX

Plucking the "Crown Jewel" Amid Uncertainty

Looking back five years, the GPU track had yet to form any industry consensus. At that time, investment interest in semiconductors was slowly heating up, but the industry generally favored domestic replacement plays with shorter payback cycles and lower technical barriers. Early in our decision-making, our team faced an intensely contentious debate: Could China actually build GPU chips? One view held that GPUs were simply too difficult — better to try DPUs or other specialized chips instead. The reasoning was straightforward: general-purpose GPUs posed too high a technical threshold and too deep an ecosystem moat for Chinese startup teams to surpass. Faced with extreme uncertainty, my team and I were resolute: if we were going to invest in hard tech, we had to reach for the "crown jewel." In the semiconductor landscape, the GPU represents the pinnacle where technical difficulty and commercial value converge. We had to place our bet from zero to one at the hardest point.

With the track set, choosing the right people proved even harder. Five years ago, the market was not short of teams that could tell compelling stories and had experience. But Weiliang Chen's arrival showed us another possibility. Unlike the archetypal charismatic founder, he was low-key, introspective, even somewhat inarticulate. He and his team possessed deep insight into GPGPU — a group of intensely pragmatic engineers.

At that non-consensus moment, we knew that building GPUs meant sitting on a "cold bench," possibly three or four years without any returns. I asked my team one question: "Even if tape-out might fail, even if subsequent fundraising becomes extremely difficult, would we still be willing to keep backing this team?" What ultimately sealed our decision was the people. The conviction and integrity that Chen's team demonstrated toward technology deeply moved me. So we made our resolute entry, investing in MetaX at the Pre-A round.

All in China: Clinging to the Green Mountain

MetaX's path to IPO was no smooth road. Building large chips burns through cash at an extreme rate. In the years before successful tape-out, the company had virtually no revenue and faced tremendous financial pressure. As an investor, it would be dishonest to say I never worried. When external conditions shifted and the industry fluctuated, our team had no fewer than ten heated internal debates about "whether to sell secondary shares." In the end, I chose to "withstand the pressure and not sell a single share," insisting on staying the course. This was based not only on trust in MetaX's technical capabilities, but even more on a tacit understanding that needed no words — we both firmly believed in the future of China's hard tech.

This understanding found vivid confirmation in a moment this year. In early 2025, Heart Capital announced its RMB Discovery Fund. In an interview, I spoke about our "All in China" conviction. When I forwarded this article to a group of entrepreneurs, Chen replied almost instantly: "Congrats Herry, All in China is exactly right."

Those few words struck me immediately. I understood Chen's deeper meaning: "Trust in and fully support China's technology and China's technologists — that's what's right." This also explains why we were able to traverse cycles side by side: because we invested not merely in a technology expert, but in a partner who shares the same belief in China's technological future. I saw the resilience that Chen's team maintained through those darkest hours. This conviction of "clinging to the green mountain and never letting go" confirmed for me: these are people who can get things done.

Once chosen, we journey through wind and rain together.

Yan Han, founding partner of Heart Capital, and Li Peng, co-founder, CTO and chief hardware architect of MetaX

Looking Ahead: The "Golden Age" of Chinese Technology

As domestic GPU companies including MetaX go public one after another, market discussion of GPGPU is growing. But if we look at the present from the future's vantage, everything has only just begun. If we compare the AI era to the mobile internet era, we are perhaps at the "iPhone 1" stage. Current AI applications are merely the tip of the iceberg of future technology. The true explosion will occur at the intersection of computing power, energy, and data — these three pillars.

China possesses the world's most advanced supply chain, the richest data scenarios, and outstanding computing infrastructure builders like MetaX. This fills us with confidence for the future. As outstanding enterprises represented by MetaX list successively, the curtain is slowly rising on the "golden age" of Chinese technology.

In Heart Capital's investment landscape, we are building an increasingly clear future vision along the veins of Chinese technology: starting from artificial intelligence and embodied intelligence, rooting inward into foundational layers like chip semiconductors and controlled nuclear fusion, and expanding outward into the vast domains of aerospace and oceans. Faced with these grand propositions that will define the future, we will continue seeking and supporting entrepreneurs with global vision and pure conviction, becoming their most steadfast companions.

Congratulations to MetaX. Congratulations to Weiliang. May we all keep our inner compass steady amid the noise, and continue to be brave explorers in the vast ocean of technology.

Founded in 2022, Heart Capital is a China-based early-stage venture capital fund focused on technology and digitalization. The Heart Capital team is primarily composed of Yan Han, founding partner of Lightspeed China, core investors, a chief financial officer, and seasoned investors from industry. The team's past investments include Series A investments in Xpeng Motors (NYSE: XPEV, 09868.HK), Full Truck Alliance (NYSE: YMM), as well as FinVolution (NYSE: FINV), RoboSense (02498.HK), Baichuan, Manmanman Lengyun, Dedao, World Logistics, Micro-Nano Starry Sky, LandSpace, Lanhu, Starfield, and others. Rooted in China with a global outlook, Heart Capital is committed to finding true value in non-consensus. Heart Capital respects the value of "people" and advocates the potential of "heart," looking forward to accompanying more young Chinese entrepreneurs to strengthen China and go global.