Washington DC [US], February 1: Enterprises across China's semiconductor industry recorded hefty profit growth last year, according to their unaudited financial results, driven by the country's artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout and Beijing's push for tech self-reliance.
Graphics processing unit (GPU) designer Cambricon Technologies on Friday reported a net profit of 2.2 billion yuan (US$316 million) in 2025, its first profitable year, on the back of "the continuous rise in computing power demand within the AI industry", according to its Shanghai Stock Exchange filing.
Other GPU designers, also viewed as alternative AI chip suppliers to Nvidia, managed to narrow their losses in 2025.
Moore Threads Technology, which listed in Shanghai last month, reported that its losses narrowed by up to 41 per cent to 1 billion yuan, while revenue rose as much as 247 per cent on the back of demand for its flagship GPU, the MTT S5000.
The Beijing-based company claimed that its AI chip had "reached market-leading levels in terms of performance".
MetaX Integrated Circuits, which started trading in Shanghai in December, narrowed its loss by up to 54 per cent to 798 million yuan in 2025.
The GPU developer partly attributed its progress to creating "a software ecosystem that is both compatible with mainstream ecosystems and independently controlled".
"Benefiting from the AI boom, domestic A-share companies in related sectors are projected to achieve substantial growth in full-year 2025 performance", a Donghai Securities research note said.
That assessment reflected investors' sharpened focus on stocks related to integrated circuits, semiconductor manufacturing equipment and storage solutions.
Hangzhou-based Great Microwave Technology - a developer of radio frequency chips and other components for China's satellite communications and defence sectors - expected as much as a 642 per cent year-on-year increase in profit to 145 million yuan (US$21 million) in 2025 on the back of strong "demand from customers in the specialised integrated circuitry industry", the company said in a Wednesday filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
With AI demand driving the global memory chip segment into what Bank of America has called a "super cycle similar to the boom of the 1990s", Chinese storage developers recorded strong gains on price increases amid a supply crunch across the industry.
Shanghai-listed Biwin Storage Technology projected up to a 520 per cent surge in its 2025 net profit to 1 billion yuan. China Micro Semicon (CMS) and GigaDevice Semiconductor said they expected profit growth of 108 per cent and 46 per cent, respectively.
Earlier this week, CMS announced on social media that prices on certain products, including flash memory, would rise at least 15 per cent owing to "industry-wide chip supply shortages and rising costs".The global memory chip crunch had already bolstered the results of major suppliers.
Samsung Electronics, for example, reported a 13 per cent jump in net profit to 44 trillion won (US$30.7 billion), as its 2025 revenue doubled to 334 trillion won from a year earlier.
While China remains barred from importing ASML's extreme ultraviolet lithography machines to build cutting-edge chips, domestic suppliers of less-advanced chipmaking equipment continued to prosper last year.
A proponent of so-called direct-write lithography technology, Circuit Fabology Microelectronics Equipment reported as high as an 84 per cent jump in 2025 net profit to 295 million yuan. Based in Hefei, the capital of eastern Anhui province, the company attributed that gain partly to a "global surge in AI computing power".
State-backed Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment estimated that its profit rose up to 35 per cent to 2.2 billion yuan in 2025, as revenue grew 37 per cent to 12.4 billion yuan.
The Shanghai-based manufacturer's etching equipment, which selectively removes material from a silicon wafer to create microscopic circuit patterns, said its machines "continued to gain recognition from an increasing number of customers both domestically and internationally".
It said shipments of high-end products for advanced logic and memory chips "saw a significant increase", without providing details.
Meanwhile, ASML chief financial officer Roger Dassen on Thursday said China's share of the company's global sales, which fell 33 per cent last year, was expected to drop to around 20 per cent in 2026 amid trade restrictions.
Primarius Technologies, one of China's leading suppliers of electronic design automation (EDA) software, said 2025 saw its return to profitability for the first time since 2022, with an estimated gain of 36 million yuan.
That followed a brief period last year when the world's top EDA vendors - Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys and Siemens EDA - were banned by the US government from sales and services in China.
"Although the regulatory restrictions were relaxed in mid-June 2025 against the backdrop of global supply chain restructuring and intensifying competition in the semiconductor industry, domestic EDA alternatives represent not only a core strategic choice for safeguarding national industrial chain security, but also for overcoming critical technological bottlenecks," a Guosheng Securities report said.
Source: Qatar Tribune
