Recent market speculation suggesting significant price increases for AI processors from Chinese manufacturers, including Cambricon, has been addressed by the company. Reports indicated that Cambricon was planning to reprice its upcoming ‘690’ chip, with a potential increase of 20% to 30% compared to earlier reference quotes.
However, when contacted by 21st Century Business Herald, a Cambricon representative stated that the company has not released any official announcements regarding price hikes. Investors are advised to rely solely on information disclosed through the company’s designated official channels and to disregard market rumors. The representative also noted that the company is unable to predict future product pricing trends.
Cambricon’s Recent Performance and Strategic Focus
This clarification comes at a time when Cambricon has reported strong financial results. For the first half of 2026, the company announced a significant increase in revenue, reaching 5.996 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 108.13%. This represents more than a doubling of revenue compared to the same period last year. Net profit attributable to shareholders also saw a substantial rise of 122.61% to 2.311 billion yuan. The non-recurring net profit after deduction also grew by 137.3% to 2.166 billion yuan, indicating a notable improvement in profitability.
During a performance briefing, Cambricon’s Chairman and General Manager, Chen Tianshi, revealed that the company has successfully completed adaptation for five major domestic large language models: GLM, DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, and MiniMax. These models are developed by prominent AI firms including Zhipu AI, DeepSeek AI, Alibaba, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax, respectively. This strategic adaptation highlights Cambricon’s commitment to supporting the burgeoning domestic AI ecosystem.
Future Development: Next-Generation Processors
Chen Tianshi also confirmed that the development of Cambricon’s sixth-generation intelligent processor microarchitecture and instruction set is currently underway. The company’s future products are set to focus on optimizing large model training and inference scenarios. Key areas of enhancement for the new generation of chips will include improvements in programming flexibility, ease of use, overall performance, power consumption control, and area optimization, aiming to bolster the competitiveness of Cambricon’s offerings in the rapidly evolving AI hardware market.
Cambricon’s proactive engagement with major domestic LLMs and its ongoing development of advanced processor architectures signal its ambition to remain a key player in the AI chip industry, both domestically and potentially on a global scale. The company’s recent financial performance further underscores its growth trajectory and market position.
