Cambricon Technologies has swung to a record $144 million profit in the first half of the year, powered by surging demand for homegrown chips after DeepSeek’s latest AI model fueled a rush into domestic hardware.
Revenue soared 44-fold to 2.9 billion yuan ($410 million), lifting Cambricon’s market value to $80 billion in August alone, reports Bloomberg.
Cambricon Technologies is one of China’s largest listed AI chip designers, supplying accelerators for training and running large language models.
Investors poured in after DeepSeek explicitly optimized its V3 model for local processors. Wee Khoon Chong, a senior strategist at the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, says the move may signal a demand shift from overseas products to homegrown alternatives
“If DeepSeek can use China-made chips, then the rest of the semiconductor universe will fly. The potential demand for Chinese chips is going to be huge.”
The rally marks a sharp turn for China’s AI chip designer, which had posted a loss a year earlier. Now, Chinese tech giants are beginning to explore Cambricon’s accelerators, primarily for inference workloads, as part of Beijing’s push to reduce reliance on Nvidia hardware, though Nvidia GPUs remain central for training large language models.
Beijing has made that pivot explicit. Reuters recently reported that Chinese authorities have summoned local tech firms, inquiring about their Nvidia chip purchases when they can buy from domestic companies.
State pressure coincides with Cambricon’s own expansion drive. The company announced a 4 billion yuan ($560 million) private placement to fund its large-model chip platform and extended support for DeepSeek, Alibaba’s Qwen, and Tencent’s Hunyuan systems.
Nvidia remains dominant globally, but the trend suggests that China’s AI giants are shifting capital and talent toward local champions. Cambricon’s $144 million profit signals how quickly that state-backed bet is reshaping the battlefield for advanced chips.
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