Cambricon rides China AI boom to post its first annual profit

Published Thu, Mar 12, 2026 · 10:44 PM

[HONG KONG] Cambricon Technologies reported its first-ever annual profit after Beijing encouraged China’s leading artificial intelligence developers to adopt locally made chips given restrictions on Nvidia.

Net income reached 2.1 billion yuan (S$391 million), just shy of analyst estimates, compared with a 452 million-yuan loss in 2024, the company said in a statement on Thursday (Mar 12). Full-year revenue surged to 6.5 billion yuan from 1.2 billion yuan.

Cambricon is one of a coterie of domestic chipmakers with ambitions to compete with Nvidia in supplying the accelerators that go into data centres and are fundamental to developing and operating AI. Its pivot to profitability marks a turning point in China’s domestic AI development.

While Nvidia has secured limited licences to sell its H200 chips in China, a lack of future supply commitments means leading AI firms like Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings are prioritizing domestically made AI accelerators, Bloomberg Intelligence said.

Sentiment in the sector also improved after Beijing unveiled plans to accelerate AI chip development to achieve more technological self-reliance in its five-year plan.

Founded in 2016 by computer scientist Chen Tianshi, Cambricon is regarded as one of the biggest beneficiaries of Beijing’s drive for self-reliance in AI and chipmaking – an effort that could draw US$98 billion in combined government and corporate spending this year alone.

The company plans to more than triple its production of AI chips in 2026, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News, aiming to wrest market share from Huawei Technologies and fill a void left by Nvidia’s forced exit.

The Beijing-based company is preparing to deliver half a million AI accelerators in 2026, people familiar with the matter said. That includes as many as 300,000 units of its most advanced Siyuan 590 and 690 chips. The company will rely primarily on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp’s latest production process, known as “N+2” seven-nanometer, the people said.

The market for AI chips in China could reach US$67 billion by 2030, of which more than three-quarters will be supplied by domestic firms such as Cambricon, Alibaba and Huawei, Morgan Stanley estimates.

“This shift reflects rising geopolitical constraints on advanced semiconductor imports and the increasing strategic importance of computing power for large language models,” the firm’s analysts wrote this week. BLOOMBERG