(Yicai Global) July 20 -- Cambricon Technologies, one of China’s fastest-growing artificial intelligence chipmakers, surged more than four and a half times to as high as CNY295 (USD42) on its first day of trading on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style Star Market, as investor confidence in new tech stocks continues to ride high.

By the afternoon, the Beijing-based firm [SHA:688256] had settled down to trade at around CNY212 (USD30), still more than triple its initial offering price of CNY64.39, to give it a market capitalization of CNY5.64 billion (USD807 million).

Cambricon offered 10 percent of its total equity in the initial public offering. The funds raised will be used to support the company’s core business of cloud training, inference and edge-end AI, according to its IPO prospectus.

The four-year-old firm has raised CNY17.5 billion (USD2.5 billion) in four rounds of financing since it was established. Despite such a blistering fund-raising track record, the company continues to operate at a loss.

Last year, Cambricon spent more than double its incomings of CNY444 million (USD63.5 million) on research and development, raking up a CNY1.2 billion net loss. This year, the firm is bracing itself for a loss of as much as CNY650 million (USD93 million), according to a filing earlier this month.

Editor: Kim Taylor