Chinese AI accelerator maker Biren Technology saw first-half revenue explode by nearly 2,000 per cent as US export controls reshaped China’s GPU market.
According to Tom’s Hardware Biren generated $183.9 million in revenue during the first half of 2026, up 1,998 per cent from roughly $8.7 million a year earlier.
Gross profit climbed to $78.6 million, giving Biren a gross margin of 42.7 per cent. It still managed to lose $56.2 million as it poured cash into new accelerators, rack-scale systems and software. The numbers look spectacular, although Biren was starting from a revenue base that makes percentage growth particularly flattering.
For the whole of 2025, Biren recorded revenue of $154.2 million while holding less than three per cent of China’s AI accelerator market, according to TrendForce. Demand began accelerating during the second half of 2025 as US export controls increasingly restricted Nvidia and AMD from supplying their high-end AI hardware to Chinese customers.
Before those restrictions tightened, Nvidia’s cut-down H20 remained popular despite costing between $12,000 and $15,000 each. Nvidia reportedly shipped about 2.2 million AI accelerators into China during the first half of 2025. Biren, by comparison, shifted only thousands or perhaps tens of thousands during the entire year.
That rather takes some of the shine off the 1,998 per cent headline figure, but Biren now has something Chinese accelerator companies spent years struggling to obtain: customers. The company has developed the BR106, BR110 and BR166 high-end AI processors and is working on its BR20X, BR30X and BR31X accelerators.
Biren has its own Birensupa software platform intended to challenge Nvidia’s entrenched CUDA ecosystem, which remains one of the biggest obstacles facing anyone trying to prise AI workloads away from the outfit.
It is also developing rack-scale systems, including designs using optical interconnects, as Chinese suppliers increasingly copy the system-level approach used by the industry’s larger players. Biren’s next headache is manufacturing. Competitive silicon is not much use if there is insufficient capacity to build it.
The company will need enough production from SMIC or other suppliers to turn growing demand into meaningful market share while competing against much larger domestic players including Huawei, Kunlunxin and Cambricon. US restrictions have removed much of the direct competition from Nvidia and AMD, at least officially, while Beijing has been increasingly keen to keep American AI hardware out of Chinese infrastructure.
