Lisuan Technology announced this week on its official WeChat channel that it has successfully powered on its prototype G100 graphics card. The company describes the G100 as China's first domestically designed 6 nm GPU, marking a significant milestone in its effort to challenge established industry players. With the first silicon now operational, Lisuan is moving into driver development, software validation, and broader system integration testing. Although Lisuan has provided few formal specifications, rumors indicate that SMIC is fabbing the G100 die, currently the only Chinese foundry capable of producing a 6 nm node under US export restrictions. Rumors describe the performance as being on par with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 in mid-range gaming tests, alongside generous onboard memory, efficient power consumption, and support for DirectX 12, Vulkan 1.3, and OpenGL 4.6. If accurate, these features could position the G100 for both gaming and general-purpose GPU workloads.

Founded in late 2021 by a team of former Silicon Valley engineers with more than 25 years of collective chip-design experience, Lisuan Technology is among the youngest entrants in China's graphics-chip sector. It follows Biren Technology (established in 2019) and Moore Threads (established in 2020) in their pursuit of a homegrown alternative to foreign GPU offerings. Beijing's push for semiconductor self-sufficiency has encouraged such ventures, and Lisuan insists its TrueGPU architecture is fully developed in-house rather than licensed from outside sources. The G100 was initially slated for a 2023 launch but encountered financial headwinds that nearly forced Lisuan into bankruptcy in 2024. A $27.7 million capital injection from the parent company, Dongxin Semiconductor, kept development on track through tape-out and early risk-production trials. Lisuan now plans to ship small volumes of G100 cards in the third quarter of 2025, with mass availability more likely in 2026.

According to a recent investigative report, UK-based Imagination Technologies faces allegations of transferring sensitive GPU intellectual property to Chinese companies with potential military connections. The UK-China Transparency organization claims that following its 2020 acquisition by China-controlled investment firm Canyon Bridge, Imagination provided complete access to its GPU IP to Chinese entities with military connections. The report suggests this included sharing detailed architectural documentation typically reserved for premier clients like Apple. At the center of the controversy are Chinese firms Moore Threads and Biren Technology, which have emerged as significant players in China's AI and GPU sectors. The report indicates Moore Threads maintains connections with military GPU suppliers, while Biren Technology has received partial Russian investment.

The organization argues that Canyon Bridge, which has ties to the state-owned China Reform enterprise, helped these technological transfers to benefit China's military-industrial complex. Imagination Technologies has defended its actions, maintaining that all licensing agreements comply with industry standards. The allegations have sparked renewed debate about foreign ownership of strategic technology assets and the effectiveness of current export controls. When Canyon Bridge acquired Imagination in 2020, security experts raised concerns about potential military applications of the firm's technology. UKCT plans to release additional findings, including information from legal disputes involving Imagination's previous management. Rising concerns over technology transfers have prompted governments to reassess export controls and corporate oversight in the semiconductor industry, as nations struggle to balance international commerce with national security priorities. We are yet to see official government response to this situation.

Golf Jiao, a co-founder and general manager of Biren Technology, has left the company late last month according to insider sources in China. No official statement has been issued by the executive team at Biren Tech, and Jiao has not provided any details regarding his departure from the fabless semiconductor design company. The Shanghai-based firm is a relatively new startup - it was founded in 2019 by several former NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Alibaba veterans. Biren Tech received $726.6 million in funding for its debut range of general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs), also defined as high-performance computing graphics processing units (HPC GPUs).

The company revealed its ambitions to take on NVIDIA's Ampere A100 and Hopper H100 compute platforms, and last August announced two HPC GPUs in the form of the BR100 and BR104. The specifications and performance charts demonstrated impressive figures, but Biren Tech had to roll back its numbers when it was hit by U.S Government enforced sanctions in October 2022. The fabless company had contracted with TSMC to produce its Biren range, and the new set of rules resulted in shipments from the Taiwanese foundry being halted. Biren Tech cut its work force by a third soon after losing its supply chain with TSMC, and the engineering team had to reassess how the BR100 and BR104 would perform on a process node larger than the original 7 nm design. It was decided that a downgrade in transfer rates would appease the legal teams, and get newly redesigned Biren silicon back onto the assembly line.