Enflame Lists on STAR Market, Backed by ZhenFund in Two Earliest Rounds

On September 11, Enflame (688801) officially listed on the STAR Market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

On its debut day, Enflame opened at 410 yuan per share, up 188.37% from its IPO price of 142.18 yuan. As of press time, the company's market capitalization stood at 176.4 billion yuan, extending the market enthusiasm seen during the subscription phase. The STAR Market listing reflects both the capital market's recognition of the long-term value of China's homegrown AI compute chip sector and brings an important AI hard-tech name to the A-share market.

Fangzhou Yao, Managing Director at ZhenFund, said: "Starting from the angel round, ZhenFund participated in Enflame's two earliest rounds of financing. The meaning of angel investing is to back capable, ambitious teams tackling the hardest, biggest challenges when the road ahead is still unclear. Investing early and investing small — for us, Enflame is one of many concrete, conviction-driven choices we've made over more than a decade, rooted in our philosophy of investing in people."

Listing day photo, left to right: Anna Fang, Founding Partner at ZhenFund; Yalin Zhang, founder of Enflame; Lidong Zhao, Chairman of Enflame; Fangzhou Yao, Managing Director at ZhenFund

Enflame was founded in March 2018.

At the time, Enflame aspired to become a technology leader and reliable supplier of independently developed AI compute solutions in China — breaking NVIDIA's monopoly.

Through an introduction by the founder of Gekong Intelligence, a ZhenFund portfolio company, we met Enflame's two founders, Lidong Zhao and Yalin Zhang, for the first time.

Recalling that first meeting in a public interview, Lidong Zhao said: "In 2018, I first met investor Minman Gu at ZhenFund's Shanghai office, then went to Beijing to meet Victor Wang (co-founder of ZhenFund) and Anna Fang (founding partner of ZhenFund). After two half-hour conversations, they made their decision quickly and offered me what I felt was the most founder-friendly term sheet in the industry."

In that meeting, after just 15 minutes of conversation, Anna Fang had already formed a clear judgment of the team: "Exceptional founders, an extremely attractive sector — genuine, sincere, with enormous upside."

Just one month after its founding, Enflame secured seed funding from ZhenFund.

It was the post-Moore's Law era: the rapid development of AI algorithms and applications was reigniting demand for computing power, opening up space for innovation in core technologies like chips. But GPUs, designed primarily for gaming and 3D graphics rendering, were not the optimal solution for AI training — and with no viable alternatives on the market, NVIDIA stood alone at the top.

The path to building high-end chips is full of ups and downs.

In 2018, domestic capital had yet to pile into the chip sector, and the prevailing view was that investing in chips could easily wipe you out. Anna Fang later recalled in an interview that she told many people at the time: "Lidong is one of the most exceptional entrepreneurs I've ever met."

ZhenFund was one of three co-lead investors in Enflame's seed round. Lidong Zhao said: "ZhenFund's term sheet truly stood on the side of the entrepreneur."

Photo on the eve of the listing, left to right: investor Minman Gu; Lidong Zhao, Chairman of Enflame; Anna Fang, Founding Partner at ZhenFund; Fangzhou Yao, Managing Director at ZhenFund

Congratulations to Enflame on this important milestone. It's an honor that ZhenFund was there as a fellow traveler from the very beginning and has accompanied the company ever since. We look forward to seeing the team set out from this new starting point and become a world-class company.