Chinese chipmaker Moore Threads, often described as “China's Nvidia” or “Nvidia alternative,” reported fast revenue growth in the first half of 2026, exceeding its entire 2025 full-year figure. The growth accompanied other domestic graphics processing unit (GPU) companies' gains, marking a clear shift toward profitability. Moore Threads, China's GPU leader, reported CNY1.736 billion in first-half revenue, up 147.42% year-on-year. Gross profit reached CNY989 million, up 103.78%, while net losses attributable to shareholders narrowed sharply by 95.73%, according to the latest financial results. The company attributed the strong growth to booming artificial intelligence (AI) demand for full-function GPUs and the accelerated commercialization of its Kuae intelligent computing clusters.
Moore Threads maintained heavy research and development (R&D) spending of CNY769 million in the first half, up 38.16% year-on-year, bringing cumulative investment since 2022 close to CNY5.9 billion. As of the end of June, it filed 2,167 patent applications and held 788 authorized patents, which ranked among the top ranks of domestic GPU enterprises, the company said. As a result of its investment in R&D, Moore Threads' flagship MTT S5000 GPUs have realized large-scale sales, with deployments in Beijing, Wuxi, Hangzhou and other cities. The first batch of intelligent computing clusters passed national security and reliability evaluations and achieved multiple “domestic chip training domestic models” breakthroughs. Its MUSA software stack now supports more than 800,000 developers. Moore Threads also announced plans for an IPO in Hong Kong. It was listed on Shanghai's STAR Market on December 5, 2025.
“Chinese firms are increasingly turning to domestic suppliers, accelerating demand for local AI accelerators. Under the combined forces of surging inference computing needs and continued capital expenditure by major cloud providers, the domestic GPU and AI chip sectors are moving from an investment phase into a commercialization and profit-delivery phase,” Yang Delong, Chief Economist at Shenzhen-based First Seafront Fund, told the Global Times. Biren, Moore Threads, MetaX and Enflame Technology are dubbed China's “four little dragons” in the GPU sector. Apart from Moore Threads, the other companies also showed rapid growth in their recent financial results.
In June, MetaX reported first-quarter revenue of CNY562 million, up 75.37% year-on-year, and said that it had begun volume sales of its next-generation general-purpose GPU C600, representing further breakthroughs in the areas of domestic adaptation and supply chain autonomy control. Enflame Technology reported 1,474.85% year-on-year growth in its revenue in the first quarter. The company estimated that its first-half revenue would grow 258.68% to 289.13%, likely to reach the level of the entire year of 2025. Domestic GPU company Biren in March released its first financial results after being listed in Hong Kong. It reported 207.2% full-year growth in revenue in 2025, with gross profit up 210.8%. AI chip leader Cambricon also delivered equally robust results. Its first-half revenue hit CNY5.996 billion, up 108.13% year-on-year, while net profit attributable to shareholders rose 122.61% to CNY2.311 billion, the Global Times reports.
However, for now, high transition costs are keeping AI developers in China reliant on Nvidia chips, industry sources say. One of the core hurdles lies in the software ecosystem. Nvidia’s Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) platform has long been the industry standard for AI development. By contrast, Huawei Technologies’ alternative – Compute Architecture for Neural Networks (CANN) – requires developers to rewrite and optimize large amounts of code.
