Cambricon Doubled Quarterly Revenue Amid AI Chip Demand Boom in China

Chinese AI chip developer Cambricon sharply accelerated growth in the first quarter of 2026: the company's revenue more than doubled, and profit grew even faster. For the Chinese market, this is an important signal: the policy of technological autonomy is already turning not just into slogans, but into real sales of local accelerators.

Quarter with a leap

Cambricon reported revenue of 2.88 billion yuan for January–March 2026 versus 1.11 billion yuan a year earlier. This is growth of approximately 160% year-over-year. Net profit for the quarter was 1.01 billion yuan versus 356 million a year ago, a gain of around 185%. The market reacted quickly: the company's shares in Shanghai jumped 14% after the financial report was published, showing the strongest single-day gain since late August.

Equally important is that the quarter looks not like a one-off spike, but a continuation of a longer trend. Back in February, the company reported its first annual profit after several unprofitable years, and in March announced a dividend of 15 yuan per 10 shares. The new report shows that Cambricon not only returned to profitability amid the AI frenzy, but managed to entrench this turnaround already at the start of 2026.

Operating cash flow for the quarter reached 834 million yuan, and total assets by the end of March grew by 14.6%. The financial statements show solid reserves: gross margin was 54.33%, and notable research and development spending was preserved even amid explosive sales growth. This matters because the AI chip market is being won not only by current deliveries, but by the speed of the next product cycle.

Why demand is growing

The key reason is simple: China needs its own computing power for training and running AI models, and dependence on foreign suppliers is becoming increasingly risky. Beijing continues its course toward self-sufficiency in critical technologies, including semiconductors, and restrictions and uncertainty around supplies of American chips only intensify demand for local alternatives.

Against this backdrop, Cambricon is receiving orders in areas where foreign solutions dominated just recently.

Cambricon attributed the leap to "sustained growth in demand for computing power in the AI industry."

By quarter figures, the picture looks like this:

• revenue — 2.88 billion yuan, growth of 159.6%
• net profit — 1.01 billion yuan, growth of 185%
• profit excluding one-time factors — 934 million yuan, growth of 238.6%
• operating cash flow — 834 million yuan, growth of 159.6%
• research and development spending — 324 million yuan, or 11.23% of revenue

The report matters also because it shows a restructuring of all Chinese AI hardware, not just one company's success. Another local developer, MetaX, also reported strong quarterly revenue growth — 75% year-over-year. But Cambricon right now looks like one of the main beneficiaries of the shift to domestic suppliers: it already has scale, a public capital market, and status as a notable candidate to become China's Nvidia replacement in AI accelerators. At the same time, competition has not gone anywhere: other players are actively growing in the country, including projects around local GPUs and specialized server chips.

What this means

Cambricon's results show that the replacement of imported AI chips in China has moved from the stage of strategy to the stage of revenue, profit, and stock market reaction. If demand for local accelerators persists, the company could become one of the key suppliers of infrastructure for the Chinese AI market. The main question now is not whether demand exists, but how quickly the domestic ecosystem will be able to scale production, memory, packaging, and software around such chips.