China's Biren, Iluvatar CoreX post strong growth, remain unprofitable

Biren Technology and Iluvatar CoreX, two China-based GPU developers, reported sharp revenue rises for 2025 in their first annual results since listing in January, even as both remained loss-making amid China’s push to use more domestic chips in AI data centers.

Biren said revenue rose 207.2% year-on-year to 1.03 billion yuan (US$149 million), above a consensus estimate of 954.5 million yuan (US$138 million), while Iluvatar CoreX reported 1.03 billion yuan (US$149 million), up 91.6%.

Biren posted a 16.5 billion yuan (US$2.3 billion) loss, and Iluvatar CoreX reported a 1 billion yuan (US$144.6 million) loss for the year.

Both companies cited wider adoption of their general-purpose GPUs, and both reported higher shipments, as Nvidia sought to re-enter China with its H200 processors.

🔗 Source: South China Morning Post

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Biren’s revenue surge is backed by credible performance against Nvidia

Revenue growth draws strength from China’s drive to buy local AI data-center chips, plus performance that holds up in testing.
Biren’s BR104 chip beat Nvidia’s widely used A100 GPU on some industry-standard MLPerf benchmarks (a commonly used suite of AI performance tests), while using less power 1.
Its BR100 chip, built on advanced 7nm technology (a manufacturing process often associated with higher performance and efficiency), matches the A100 in deep learning tasks 2.
That track record helped lift demand for its Hong Kong IPO (initial public offering) debut in January 2026; Biren closed its first trading day with a market capitalization above HK$81 billion (about US$10 billion) 3.

China’s GPU push could harden into a parallel market

China’s domestic GPU firms still account for under 3% of the China GPU market, where Nvidia remains the leading player 4.
Recent gains lean on state-backed work, including deployments at China Mobile, China’s state-owned telecommunications operator 2.
U.S. export controls sped up a split market, pushing China to build a homegrown Chinese AI hardware ecosystem 5.
Nvidia and other global firms may face a ceiling on China sales as policy nudges buyers toward domestic alternatives 4.