AI chipmaker Cambricon’s sales miss points to tight chip supply in China

Cambricon’s revenue doubled to 3.53B yuan in the third quarter, well short of the 6.26B analysts expected, Bloomberg reported. Profit rose 148%, and the company kept its 2026 target. Chinese AI chipmakers face shortages of high-bandwidth memory and limited access to advanced manufacturing.

Cambricon, one of China’s main makers of AI chips, missed sales forecasts in its latest quarter as it struggled to make enough chips, Bloomberg reported. Revenue doubled to 3.53B yuan ($529M) in the three months to September, but analysts had expected about 6.26B yuan.

Net profit rose 148% to 1.4B yuan. Cambricon said it expects to keep growing on strong demand for AI computing power. It kept its target of at least 13.5B yuan in revenue for 2026, more than double last year’s.

The Beijing company is one of several Chinese firms trying to replace Nvidia, whose most advanced chips can’t be sold to China under US export rules. Beijing has also reportedly told AI firms to stop buying some Nvidia chips, in favour of local ones from Huawei and Cambricon.

Morgan Stanley expects Cambricon to hold about 14% of China’s AI chip market this year, second only to Huawei. Its chips run AI models from Chinese labs including DeepSeek and Moonshot.

Supply is a problem across China’s chip industry, and even Huawei can’t make enough AI chips. Chinese chip designers are short of high-bandwidth memory, which is packed next to AI chips and made mainly by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. US-led sanctions stop those firms selling it to Chinese buyers, and local stockpiles are running down.

Chinese chipmakers also rely on local factories such as SMIC, which can’t get ASML’s most advanced chipmaking machines. A bill in the US Congress aims to cut off more equipment.

Cambricon appears to be stocking up: its inventory grew by about 3.4B yuan in the quarter, almost as much as its sales, China AI Dispatch reported, citing the company’s filing.

Cambricon’s shares have lost about half their value since a record high in June, as China’s AI stock rally cooled.

Story by Alina Maria Stan

Alina Maria Stan builds connections that people actually feel. As co-founder and COO of Tekpon, she turns product intuition into real moment (show all) Alina Maria Stan builds connections that people actually feel. As co-founder and COO of Tekpon, she turns product intuition into real moments of discovery, shaping how teams find and adopt SaaS every day. Since 2020, she has led Tekpon’s brand voice, media strategy, and growth plays with a clear focus on human outcomes behind every metric. Before Tekpon, Alina followed curiosity across industries and countries. She was CEO of King Casino Bonus and led affiliate and brand strategy at Extremoo Media and Fable Media in Denmark, where she learned how to build partnerships that last. Early on, she sharpened her CRM and pricing instincts at K.H. ApS, always asking why customers choose what they choose. Her approach is rooted in more than a decade of international experience and two master’s degrees, one in Sustainable Consumption from the Technical University of Munich and one in Consumer Affairs Management from Aarhus University.