Dissecting the "thousand-yuan stock" Cambrian: Revenue surges 453%, "bleeding" has not yet stopped

(Source: Another Mirror)

■ Core cloud business revenue in 2025 reaches 6.477 billion yuan

■ Finally turns losses into profits

■ Breaking reliance on a single product and optimizing the business structure are key to long-term growth

Author | Chenxi

Editor | Chen Qiu

Another Mirror ID: DMS-012

For Cambrian, 2025 is an important turning point year.

Recently, Cambrian released its 2025 financial report. It achieved revenue of 6.497 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 453.20% compared with 2024. Net profit attributable to shareholders was 2.059 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 555.24%. The company has finally turned losses into profits.

However, behind these eye-catching figures, “the thousand-yuan stock” Cambrian still faces multiple hidden worries and challenges. With a PE-TTM of 212.77x, a revenue structure highly dependent on a single product line, an edge computing business that has nearly been cut in half, and operating cash flow still “bleeding,” these issues are challenges the company will have to face going forward.

First profit since listing

Cloud product line gross margin declines for years

Cambrian is a globally well-known emerging company in the intelligent chip field. It can provide a series of intelligent chip products and platform-based basic system software with a unified ecosystem, integrating cloud, edge, and terminal; supporting hardware-software collaboration; and enabling training-inference fusion.

And in just ten years, Cambrian completed a three-level leap—from starting up, to successfully listing, to achieving large-scale profitability.

The company’s founder is Chen Tianshi, born in 1985. At 16, he was admitted to the Youth Class of the University of Science and Technology of China. At 25, he obtained a PhD degree in computer software and theory.

In 2016, the AI boom swept the world and the industry’s window suddenly opened. Chen Tianshi seized the opportunity and officially founded Cambrian in March of that year.

In 2020, Chen Tianshi led Cambrian to target the STAR Market. On July 20 of that year, Cambrian was officially listed. The issue price was 64.39 yuan per share. The opening price surged, and on the first day the market capitalization broke through 1 trillion yuan, making it one of the fastest companies to reach 1 trillion on the STAR Market. The market dubbed it “China’s No. 1 AI chip stock.”

However, after listing, Cambrian did not shake off the state of continuous losses. From 2021 to 2024, the company’s operating revenue was 721 million yuan, 729 million yuan, 709 million yuan, and 1.174 billion yuan, respectively, with year-on-year growth of 57.12%, 1.11%, -2.70%, and 65.56%.

Over the same period, net profit attributable to shareholders was -825 million yuan, -1.257 billion yuan, -848 million yuan, and -452 million yuan, respectively, with year-on-year changes of -89.86%, -52.32%, 32.47%, and 46.69%.

AI chips belong to a highly technology-intensive sector. The industry has characteristics such as high R&D investment, long cycles, and high risk—this is also the core reason behind Cambrian’s phased losses.

But in 2025, driven by an explosion in demand for AI computing power, Cambrian delivered a dual surge in both revenue and profit. The company achieved operating revenue of 6.497 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 453.20% compared with 2024; net profit attributable to shareholders was 2.059 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 555.24%.

At present, Cambrian’s main product lines include the cloud product line, the edge product line, IP licensing, and software.

The cloud product line currently includes cloud intelligent chips and boards, and intelligent complete machines. Simply put, the cloud product line is AI-dedicated hardware that Cambrian provides for large data centers, cloud computing and other platforms. The main customers of the cloud product line are large enterprises and institutions. Its core goal is to enable AI to process massive data efficiently and run complex tasks.

This is also Cambrian’s most core business. In 2025, revenue from the cloud product line was 6.477 billion yuan, accounting for 99% or more of its operating revenue, showing how heavily Cambrian relies on the cloud product line.

However, such a highly concentrated business structure may significantly weaken the company’s ability to withstand cyclical fluctuations in the industry. Once demand for cloud computing power slows down temporarily, or technological route iterations and upgrades accelerate, or market competition intensifies causing the cloud product market share to fall, it will directly trigger large fluctuations in the company’s overall revenue.

But it should be noted that as the company’s absolute revenue pillar, the gross margin of the cloud product line has been showing a sustained downward trend for years.

According to the financial report, from 2022 to 2024, the gross margins of the cloud product line were 63.47%, 60.63%, and 56.69%, respectively—down by 6.78 percentage points over three years.

Then in 2025, the cloud product line’s gross margin continued to decline, at 55.22%, down 1.56 percentage points from 2024.

It is clear that for Cambrian, how to consolidate its advantages in the cloud computing market while increasing product added value through technological iterations to curb the downward trend in gross margin will be the core challenge to tackle next.

Supply chain constrained

Edge computing revenue down 48.12%

It is worth noting that Cambrian operates under a Fabless (no-fab) model. Its suppliers include IP licensing firms, server manufacturers, wafer fabrication companies, and packaging and testing companies.

That means Cambrian does not produce chips itself. Instead, it focuses only on the chip design stage. Key stages such as chip manufacturing, packaging, and testing are highly dependent on external third-party manufacturers, including SMIC, TSMC, and JCET, among other companies. As a result, the industry’s bargaining power and the stability of the supply chain are constrained by external factors.

Meanwhile, the integrated circuit industry itself is highly specialized, with prominent technical barriers. In addition, Cambrian and some of its subsidiaries have been placed on the “Entity List,” further exacerbating its potential supply chain risks.

What’s more, Cambrian’s customers are also extremely concentrated. The financial report shows that over the past three years, the combined sales amount of the top five customers accounted for 92.36%, 94.63%, and 88.66% of operating revenue, respectively. This high reliance on core customers further amplifies operating risk.

What’s more, there was already a precedent. It is reported that Cambrian was deeply tied with Huawei, with Huawei as a core cooperation partner. Ultimately, they “separated” completely because Huawei insisted on an independent and controllable strategy. Now, the two directly compete in areas such as edge computing and cloud AI chips, which makes the risk of highly concentrated customers even more prominent.

As can be seen, breaking reliance on a single product and optimizing the business structure are key directions for Cambrian to hedge industry risks and achieve long-term growth. But currently, apart from its core cloud business, other businesses such as edge computing and IP licensing are still in an early-stage cultivation phase.

It is understood that edge computing is a distributed computing framework and an important scenario for implementing artificial intelligence. It refers to an open platform that integrates the core capabilities of network, computing, storage, and applications on the network edge near objects or data sources, providing edge intelligence services nearby.

It is worth noting that Cambrian faces significant competitive pressure in this sector.

Companies currently deploying edge computing include many manufacturers such as Huawei, Aichip YuanZhi, Horizon Robotics, and Rockchip. Competition in the market is getting increasingly fierce. Among them, Huawei holds a leading position thanks to its full-stack solutions and ecosystem advantages. Aichip YuanZhi and Horizon Robotics focus on niche scenarios such as vision and automotive applications.

However, Cambrian’s edge business is still at the beginning stage. In 2025, Cambrian’s edge computing revenue was 3.394 million yuan, down 48.12% compared with the same period in 2024. Revenue was almost “cut in half.” At the same time, the gross margin of the edge computing business was 44.52%, down 6.98 percentage points from the previous year.

While edge computing business revenue continues to fall, Cambrian’s R&D expense ratio also declines in parallel, further increasing the difficulty of achieving business diversification breakthroughs.

According to the financial report, in 2025, Cambrian’s R&D expenses were 1.351 billion yuan, up 11.10% year-on-year compared with the same period in 2024. However, the R&D expense ratio was only around 17%, which is down compared with last year.

Nevertheless, Cambrian has already achieved a breakthrough by turning losses into profits, marking an important shift from its previous sustained loss-making state. However, in 2025, the net cash flow from operating activities was -498 million yuan, meaning it has not yet escaped the “bleeding” state.

Against the backdrop of an increasingly crowded AI chip sector and accelerated technological iteration, how to consolidate its advantages in the cloud computing market while optimizing the business structure and diversifying customer and supply chain risks will be the core issues Cambrian must tackle in its next phase. Standing at the starting point of profitability, the real test may have just begun.

Endless information and precise insights—available in the Sina Finance APP