Shanghai Enflame Technology surged on its first trading day Friday after the Chinese AI chip developer raised about 6.12 billion yuan ($911 million) in an initial public offering, underscoring strong investor appetite for domestic alternatives to Nvidia chips.

Shares opened at 410 yuan, nearly ...

Chinese regulators are tightening the approval for humanoid startups seeking to go public after a volatile debut by industry leader Unitree Robotics, as they aim to cool down a sizzling sector rife with copycats but little real technological breakthroughs.

The Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission recently gave its informal “window guidance” to some investment banks and investment firms that it is raising the bar for granting approval of humanoid IPOs, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Companies must demonstrate they can generate recurring revenue, are on a path to narrow their losses or achieve real innovation before approvals can be considered, the people added.

Microsoft is planning to significantly increase production of its internally designed next-generation AI chips next year in hopes of persuading big cloud customers like Anthropic to use them, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plans.

That’s despite slow uptake of the current generation of Microsoft-designed chips, known as the Maia 200. Microsoft plans to publicly unveil its new Maia 300 chip this fall, potentially as soon as next month, one of the people said. The cloud giant has been in talks with chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to secure manufacturing capacity for over 300,000 of the chips for delivery in 2027, the second person said—an order of magnitude above the tens of thousands of Maia 200 chips Microsoft has produced so far.

On a muggy morning in April, a venture capitalist from San Francisco arrived in China’s southern tech hub of Shenzhen with a long shopping list. His friends at U.S. robotic startups had asked him to bring back humanoids and various robotic components from China.

He headed to Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei district, the world’s biggest electronics bazaar. At one store, he bought humanoids, which he arranged to ship back to the U.S. He then went upstairs to component floors—a labyrinth of countless stalls barely larger than walk-in closets—to pick up robot parts that control motion, manage power and carry signals. Instead of shipping those components as freight, he packed them in a suitcase and took that with him on a flight back to San Francisco.