The Pulse
Cambricon’s Q3 Profit Climbs 148% as Revenue More Than Doubles
Cambricon Technologies reported third-quarter net profit of 1.404 billion yuan, up 147.74% year over year, as revenue rose 104.47%. The Chinese chipmaker attributed the growth to market expansion and AI application deployment, while quarter
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
Cambricon Technologies’ net profit attributable to shareholders jumped 147.74% in the third quarter, reaching 1.404 billion yuan (about US$210 million), as revenue more than doubled. The Shanghai-listed chipmaker’s results, for the three months ended September 30, put a financial marker on rising demand for Chinese-made AI processors as China pushes to replace Nvidia chips.
Revenue rose 104.47% year over year to 3.531 billion yuan, according to the company’s third-quarter report, released on October 23. The report is unaudited. Cambricon said the sales increase came from its market expansion and work to bring AI applications into use; the South China Morning Post rendered part of that statement as “facilitate the implementation of AI applications.”
Revenue growth accelerated from the previous quarter
The third-quarter revenue increase outpaced the 75.8% year-over-year rise reported for the second quarter, according to the South China Morning Post. Profit growth also ran ahead of sales: total profit increased 148.08%, while profit attributable to shareholders rose 147.74%. The figures point to a sharp expansion in Cambricon’s business, though the company’s filing attributes the gains to its own market expansion and AI deployment rather than quantifying how much came from customers switching away from foreign chips.
For the first nine months of 2026, revenue reached 9.526 billion yuan, up 106.76% from a year earlier. Net profit attributable to shareholders totalled 3.715 billion yuan, a 131.49% increase. The nine-month figures show that the third-quarter jump extends a broader run of growth rather than standing alone.
Adjusted profit grew faster than reported earnings
Net profit excluding non-recurring gains and losses rose 168.13% in the quarter to 1.358 billion yuan. That measure grew faster than reported net profit, indicating that the quarter’s earnings increase was not driven primarily by the items the company classifies as non-recurring. For the first nine months, the adjusted figure was 3.523 billion yuan, up 148.30%.
Cambricon spent 522.6 million yuan on research and development in the quarter, an increase of 73.66% year over year. R&D spending amounted to 14.8% of quarterly revenue. Across the first nine months, the company reported 1.225 billion yuan in R&D expense, up 45.35%.
Quarterly cash flow was negative despite the profit jump
Operating cash flow was negative 83.7 million yuan in the third quarter, even as net profit exceeded 1.4 billion yuan. For the first nine months, however, operating cash flow was positive 227.6 million yuan, compared with a negative 29.3 million yuan in the same period last year. Cambricon attributed the year-over-year improvement to a substantial increase in cash collected from sales.
The gap between quarterly earnings and operating cash flow is one measure investors will weigh alongside the headline growth. Cambricon’s filing reports a fast-growing chip business, higher research spending and a quarterly cash outflow; its third-quarter accounts have not yet been audited.