Baidu’s chip division Kunlun Core is racing to list with a $50 billion valuation, and has been accused of tying up purchase agreement requirements that bind investors to subscription-amount-based terms of 3 to 7 times.

According to Dongcha Beating monitoring, Baidu’s AI chip company Kunlun Core plans to launch an initial public offering in Hong Kong, with a valuation target of $50 billion. However, during its roadshow, it lists chip-purchase commitments as a prerequisite for subscription. Multiple insiders participating in the roadshow said that during placement, Kunlun Core prioritizes buyers who commit to purchasing the chips, requiring the value of the chips to be purchased to be 3 to 7 times the subscription amount.

The $50 billion valuation target is nearly 40% higher than the market capitalization of its parent company, Baidu. Baidu currently holds 58% of Kunlun Core’s shares. Previously, Kunlun Core had planned to raise up to $2 billion through its initial public offering, but it faces pressure to establish an external customer base in the highly competitive Chinese AI chip market.

Kunlun Core was founded in 2011, and its products are compatible with Nvidia’s CUDA software system. Baidu has begun training a new version of its ERNIE large model on Kunlun Core chips, partially replacing Nvidia’s GPUs. Currently, the main chip for inference is the P800 series, the M100 series is prepared for large-scale inference this year, and the M300 series is planned for training and inference in 2027. In addition to its parent company, Tencent has also become a major external customer.

However, Kunlun Core did not make it into the first batch of security and reliability evaluation chip certification list published by China in May, while Huawei, Moiris (MetaX), Moore Threads, and Alibaba’s T-Head have all been selected. The main reason it did not obtain certification is related to foundry channels; Kunlun Core previously relied mainly on Samsung Electronics for chip manufacturing. To secure procurement orders from the government and state-owned enterprises, Kunlun Core is in negotiations with SMIC, planning to shift some chip production to domestic foundries.