Chipmakers driving AI boom

China's artificial intelligence boom is increasingly being driven by chipmakers, as export controls by the United States on advanced semiconductors accelerate Beijing's push for AI development, according to a new ranking released by the Hurun Research Institute.

AI chip companies have claimed seven of the top 10 spots in the 2025 Hurun China Artificial Intelligence Enterprises Top 50, with Cambricon Technologies Corp, Moore Threads, and MetaX Integrated Circuits (Shanghai) Co Ltd taking the top three positions by valuation.

Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report, attributed this corporate prominence partly to the tightening export restrictions by the US on high-end AI chips, which have in turn accelerated China's push for self-reliance in computing power.

Despite the momentum, the gap with global leaders remains wide. The combined market value of Cambricon, Moore Threads and MetaX — about 1.2 trillion yuan ($172.3 billion) — is roughly 4 percent of Nvidia Corp's market capitalization.

Cambricon, a Beijing-headquartered AI processor designer, topped the list with a valuation of 630 billion yuan, up 165 percent year-on-year.

The company reported revenue of 1.73 billion yuan in the third quarter of 2025, rocketing 1,332 percent year-on-year, while net profit turned positive at 567 million yuan, marking its fourth consecutive profitable quarter. But its third-quarter revenue slipped 2.4 percent from the previous quarter, while net profit fell 17 percent.

Moore Threads, founded in 2020 and focusing on full-function GPUs, ranked second with a valuation of 310 billion yuan. The Shanghai-based firm drew market attention in 2025 by completing China's fastest-ever approval for a STAR Market IPO in just 88 days.

Others among the top 10 were iFlytek, Horizon Robotics, Mini-Max, SenseTime Group, Rockchip Electronics Co Ltd and Biren Technology, spanning fields from speech recognition and autonomous driving to AI infrastructure and chips.

Content generation, computer vision and autonomous driving each accounted for eight companies, with MiniMax, SenseTime, and Pony.ai emerging as category leaders. Speech recognition firms numbered just three, though iFlytek remains a benchmark player.

Geographically, China's top-tier cities continue to dominate. Beijing led with 19 companies, followed by Shanghai with 14, Shenzhen in Guangdong province with six, and Guangzhou, also in Guangdong, with four. First-tier cities accounted for more than 80 percent of all ranked firms.

Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, said, "As China's computing industry continues to break through, the next five years will see a substantial closing of the gap and a meaningful rise in China's share of global AI computing power."

chengyu@chinadaily.com.cn