Biren, Iluvatar CoreX post triple-digit revenue growth but losses persist in AI chip race
Other Chinese AI chipmakers, including Cambricon, Moore Threads and MetaX, also posted stellar revenue growth for 2025
Biren Technology and Iluvatar CoreX, two Chinese graphics processing unit (GPU) champions that are seen as potential alternatives to Nvidia, saw their revenues surge in 2025 amid China’s accelerated push for chip self-sufficiency, according to their first earnings reports since listing in January.
Biren’s annual revenue surged 207.2 per cent from a year ago to 1.03 billion yuan (US$149 million), beating the consensus estimate of 954.5 million yuan, while its crosstown rival Iluvatar CoreX posted revenue of 1.03 billion yuan, an increase of 91.6 per cent year on year.
Both companies, however, are still in the red, with losses of 16.5 billion yuan and 1 billion yuan for Biren and Iluvatar CoreX, respectively.
The companies attributed the surge in revenues to wider adoption of their chips. Biren said it had completed “volume production and at-scale shipment” of its general-purpose GPUs (GPGPUs) – BR106 and BR166 – while Iluvatar CoreX said its shipment volumes of GPGPUs increased by 168.5 per cent during the year.
The shipment increases come as Beijing accelerates the push for adoption of home-grown chips in the nation’s AI data centres, at the same time as US rival Nvidia was seeking to return to the Chinese market with its H200 processors.
Other Chinese AI chipmakers, including Cambricon Technologies, Moore Threads and MetaX Integrated Circuits, also posted stellar revenue growth for 2025, driven by the country’s growing appetite for domestic computing power.