Cambricon Technologies
Chinese AI chip designer building Nvidia-alternative accelerators for domestic cloud and data center buyers.
On the record
Checkpoint: Q2 2026 earnings report covering Siyuan 690 shipment volumes and yield data
The call
Cambricon turned its first profit on real chips and real customers, while Huawei ships more silicon and holds more of the market it's fighting for.
Cambricon designs and sells AI accelerator chips (processors that run artificial intelligence models) mainly to Chinese tech companies. The company just turned profitable and has a working product called the Siyuan 690, but Huawei is already winning most of China's AI chip market (about 62% vs. Cambricon's 14%) with its competing Ascend chips, and Huawei is also going after Cambricon's biggest customer, ByteDance. One thing that could change everything: whether the new Siyuan 690 chip actually ships in large quantities and whether customers like ByteDance stop trying to make their own chips and instead rely on Cambricon instead of Huawei.
Why
01
AI pressure: None apparent. Cambricon makes the chips AI runs on, so AI demand growth feeds its revenue rather than threatening it directly. Could AI do the core job? Unlikely.
02
Bigger players: Huawei (Ascend/HiSilicon). Huawei already ships Ascend 910C/950PR and holds an estimated 62% of China's AI chip market versus Cambricon's 14%. Could a giant copy it? Probably.
03
What protects it. CUDA-compatible software built on RMB 5.6B of R&D, which ByteDance engineers reportedly find easier to use than Huawei's Ascend tooling.
What would change this call
Siyuan 690 reaches or misses the 500K-unit 2026 shipment target with yields above 50%. Shows whether Cambricon can scale production fast enough to defend share against Huawei.
ByteDance publicly shifts primary chip orders to Huawei Ascend or its own in-house silicon. Would confirm loss of Cambricon's largest customer to a rival.
Huawei's Ascend 950PR ships in volume and its reported $5.6B ByteDance deal is confirmed. Would show Huawei converting market share lead into locked-in customer commitments.
ByteDance publicly shifts primary chip orders to Huawei Ascend or its own in-house silicon. Would confirm loss of Cambricon's largest customer to a rival.
Huawei's Ascend 950PR ships in volume and its reported $5.6B ByteDance deal is confirmed. Would show Huawei converting market share lead into locked-in customer commitments.
Key numbers
- FY2025 revenue RMB 6.5B, profit RMB 2.1B, first profitable year
- Top customer's share fell from 79.2% to ~26% of revenue
- Huawei ~62% vs Cambricon ~14% of China AI chip market
Named risks
- Siyuan 590/690 chip yields reported at only ~20% as of late 2025.
- Extreme customer concentration, top-5 buyers 88.66% of 2025 revenue, ByteDance over 50% at one point.
- Huawei dominates domestic market at ~62% share versus Cambricon's ~14%.
- US-China export policy could reopen Nvidia access to China, eroding Cambricon's tailwind.
- March 2026 dividend seen as enabling insider share reduction by founder Chen Tianshi.
Rivals, as read in July 2026
| Rival | Direction | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Huawei (Ascend) | losing to | Huawei ~62% vs Cambricon ~14% domestic AI accelerator share, reported 2026-06-01 |
| Nvidia | contesting | Nvidia China share fell ~95% to ~0% by Oct 2025, but Dec 2025 H200 approval creates reopening risk |
| Moore Threads | contesting | Moore Threads posted 243% 2025 revenue growth, first quarterly profit reported Q1 2026 |
| ByteDance in-house silicon | gaining on | ByteDance reportedly over 50% of Cambricon orders in 2025 while also building own chips and Ascend deals |
| MetaX Integrated Circuits | contesting | MetaX posted 121% revenue growth with narrowing losses in 2025, per 2026-03-09 report |
Questions people ask
- Is Cambricon Technologies profitable in 2025?
- Yes, Cambricon reported its first full-year profit in FY2025: revenue of RMB 6.497 billion (up 453.21% YoY) and net profit of RMB 2.059 billion (up 555% YoY), reversing a RMB 450 million loss in 2024, per TrendForce reporting dated 2026-03-09.
- Who is Cambricon Technologies' biggest competitor?
- Huawei's Ascend/HiSilicon line is the dominant rival. Morgan Stanley (cited 2026-06-01) projected Huawei capturing about 62% of China's domestic AI accelerator market in 2026 versus Cambricon's roughly 14%, despite Cambricon's software advantages.
- Could AI itself make Cambricon obsolete?
- No, Cambricon designs the chips that power AI rather than a thin AI-replaceable software layer. Its real risk is competitive and geopolitical, namely Huawei's fuller stack and hyperscaler in-house silicon, not frontier models automating away its business.
- Who owns Cambricon Technologies?
- Founder and chairman Chen Tianshi holds an effective stake of roughly 29% (direct plus a control vehicle), while the state-linked China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund ('Big Fund') holds about 6.5%, per a 2026-03-17 ownership analysis following the company's 2020 STAR Market IPO.
- Is Cambricon Technologies stock overvalued?
- As of July 2026 Cambricon's market cap was roughly $104-128 billion against FY2025 revenue of only RMB 6.497 billion (about $900M-$9B depending on conversion), implying a valuation priced for near-flawless execution of its Siyuan 690 ramp and continued Huawei-share gains.
- What is Cambricon's biggest risk right now?
- Yields on its top-tier Siyuan 590/690 chips were reported at only about 20% as of late 2025 (per CNBC-TV18, 2025-12-04), while its top-5 customers made up 88.66% of 2025 revenue, with ByteDance reportedly over 50% of orders at one point, per Bloomberg-sourced reporting.
Timeline
- 2026-07-14Bernstein forecasts 2026 revenue could reach RMB 28.8 billion, about 4x 2025
- 2026-06-02Huawei's Ascend 950PR reportedly wins $5.6B ByteDance order, targets 750K units in 2026
- 2026-04-29Q1 2026 revenue RMB 2.88 billion, net profit RMB 1.01 billion, up 185% YoY
- 2026-03-17Cambricon proposes first-ever dividend of about RMB 6.32 billion after first profitable year
- 2026-03-09FY2025 results confirm first annual profit: RMB 6.497B revenue, RMB 2.059B net profit
- 2025-12-15Reports say Siyuan 690 mass production could slip to H2 2026
- 2025-12-04Cambricon targets 500,000 accelerator shipments in 2026; yields reported near 20%
- 2025-09-09CSRC approves roughly RMB 4.98 billion private placement for LLM chip projects
- 2023-09-25Founding investor SDIC Venture Capital sells nearly all its stake amid losses
- 2020-07-20Cambricon IPOs on STAR Market, shares close first day up 230-336%
Head to head
Revision history
24 July 2026
First assessed. Losing its protection. The text above is fixed as of this date and is not edited afterwards.
In the same band
Sources
- Cambricon Turns Profitable in 2025 (2026-03-09)
- Cambricon Technologies (688256) Q1 2026 Summary (2026-04-29)
- Cambricon's First Annual Profit Fuels Hefty 6 Billion Yuan Dividend (2026-03-17)
- Inside Cambricon's AI workload Test (2026-07-05)
- Cambricon Remains China's Top AI Chip Startup (2025-12-15)
- Cambricon Technologies Corp aims to triple output (2025-12-04)
- Chinese fabless chipmakers surge (2025-10-20)
- US export curbs push China's AI chips away from GPUs to custom ASICs (2026-06-01)
- US Chip Export Curbs Impact Nvidia in China (2026-07-06)
- Real Nvidia Replacement or Fragmented Catch-Up? (2026-06-02)
- Who Owns Cambricon Technologies? (2026-03-17)
- Founding investor dumps almost all its stake (2023-09-25)