Chinese chip companies achieve record revenue

SMIC, China’s largest chip manufacturer, announced that its 2025 revenue will increase by 16% compared to 2024, reaching a record of 9.3 billion USD. According to estimates by LSEG analysts, this year’s revenue could exceed 11 billion USD.

Another domestic chip manufacturer, Hua Hong, also reported record revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025, reaching 659.9 million USD. Or Moore Threads, a company aiming to compete with Nvidia, forecasts 2025 revenue of about 1.45-1.52 billion yuan (209.8-219.9 million USD), an increase of 231% to 247% compared to 2024.

Analysts point out many factors that help the Chinese chip manufacturing industry prosper. According to Paul Triolo, an expert at Albright Stonebridge Group, the development of electric vehicles and related infrastructure has supported the consumption of popular chips. Meanwhile, demand for advanced chips “skyrockets thanks to AI”.

At the same time, US restrictions aimed at cutting China off from key technologies have spurred efforts to become self-reliant, creating opportunities for the domestic semiconductor industry. In particular, restricting the export of Nvidia chips causes Beijing to encourage businesses to buy domestic solutions instead.

“While China is not yet at the forefront of peak GPU performance, these domestic solutions are filling the ‘computing gap’ in the country and driving record revenue,” commented Parv Sharma, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research.

China’s memory chip manufacturing sector also benefits. Memory chips are key components for AI data centers and consumer electronics. They are in short supply globally, causing an unprecedented increase in sales.

ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), one of China’s leading memory chip manufacturers, saw revenue increase 130%, to more than 55 billion yuan ($8 billion). The world high bandwidth memory (HBM) market is dominated by three manufacturers: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.

Restrictions on HBM exports to China have created an opportunity for CXMT, although its technology is not yet on par with leading manufacturers, according to Phelix Lee, senior equity analyst at Morningstar. “CXMT is becoming the only domestic alternative,” he said.

According to Albright Stonebridge Group’s Triolo, the expertise gained from memory chip manufacturing could lead to advances in other types of chips such as GPUs. “All memory chip factories in China are now incubating advanced process technology in ways that were unimaginable, even before US export controls took effect in October 2022,” he said.

Recording record revenue, China’s semiconductor industry still faces challenges. This country’s company has not kept up with technological capabilities compared to competitors in the US, Korea, Europe and Taiwan. SMIC and Hua Hong still cannot produce the world’s most advanced chips on a large scale like TSMC because they cannot access the most advanced tools produced by ASML in the Netherlands.

According to Mr. Triolo, Chinese semiconductor companies are under great pressure from US export control measures. Domestic alternatives are increasingly popular in many small sectors, but not across the board.

“China is the only country that is trying to replicate much of the semiconductor supply chain and this is of course quite challenging, it will take more time to overcome US controls in key areas,” he said.