Thirst for local AI chips raises revenue for China GPU leaders Cambricon, MetaX
China’s chip foundries also benefit from the country’s efforts to achieve semiconductor self-reliance
Cambricon’s first-quarter revenue jumped 160 per cent from a year earlier to 2.89 billion yuan (US$423 million), while profit soared 185 per cent to 1 billion yuan, the company said in a filing on Wednesday.
Sometimes dubbed “little Nvidia” in China, the Beijing-based, Shanghai-listed company attributed its strong growth to a “sustained surge in the AI industry’s computing power demand”.
The company said last month that it planned to distribute a cash dividend of 15 yuan (US$2.20) for every 10 shares held, totalling more than 632 million yuan, after announcing in February that it had swung to a net profit of 2 billion yuan last year, following years of losses.
MetaX, founded in 2020 by former engineers of US chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, attributed its increased revenue to significant growth in shipments of its graphics processing units (GPUs).