Cambricon has distributed another 3 billion yuan to 944 of its employees.

Within just one month, Cambricon has twice become the focus of the capital market.

First, the equity incentive of the first 124 employees was unlocked, with a per capita floating profit of over 5.57 million yuan, creating a large number of millionaires or even multimillionaires overnight; immediately after, on the same day, this leading AI chip company granted 4 million restricted shares to 944 employees, with a coverage rate as high as 85% and a market value of about 3 billion yuan, which can be called "all-staff incentive".

With the wealth pouring in, everyone in the company from executives to engineers is calculating an account: the first batch of exercisers turned the subscription price of 49.40 yuan into a stock price of 1,120 yuan in 3 years, with an increase of more than 20 times; while the new grantees' grant price of 750 yuan has already generated a floating profit of more than 50% against the current price. But the greater temptation is yet to come — if the 100-billion-yuan revenue target is achieved, today's grant will lead to huge wealth tomorrow.

The 20-fold wealth creation myth in three years

When the huge waves of the era beat the reefs of the industry, those who choose to stick to their posts even in the trough period are often the first to be lifted up.

Recently, the first batch of shares under Cambricon's 2023 restricted stock incentive plan was officially unlocked and listed. According to the announcement, 129 core employees entered the market at the initial subscription price of 75.10 yuan per share, which was later adjusted to 49.40 yuan due to equity distribution. Three years later, Cambricon's stock price has stood at 1,120 yuan per share, equivalent to an increase of more than 20 times.

It is worth noting that 124 out of the 129 employees successfully unlocked their shares, holding a total of 597,600 shares with a corresponding market value of about 690 million yuan. This means that the per capita book income is as high as 5.57 million yuan.

Specifically, 6 executives unlocked 11,920 shares per capita, with a per capita floating profit of over 13.77 million yuan; 118 key business backbones unlocked about 4,500 shares per capita, with a per capita income of over 5 million yuan. Looking back, such a "wealth creation" myth is rare in the history of A-share hard technology companies.

However, this is not the first time that Cambricon has "distributed money" through equity incentives. As early as 2020, the company launched its first restricted stock incentive plan. The announcement shows that at that time, Cambricon granted 4.4 million shares to 490 employees at a grant price of 65 yuan per share, covering 58% of the total number of employees at that time; in November 2023, the company launched a new round of incentive plan, granting 8 million shares to 715 employees at a grant price of 75.10 yuan per share, covering 56.5% of the total number of employees.

What really turned this "equity incentive plan" into reality is the leapfrog growth of Cambricon's fundamentals. Three years ago, when employees entered the market at the initial cost of 75.10 yuan per share, Cambricon's performance was still mired in losses, and the market was full of doubts about the prospects of domestic AI chips.

But the turning point came in 2025. When the company achieved a full-year revenue of 6.497 billion yuan, a year-on-year surge of 453%, and a return of 2.059 billion yuan in net profit attributable to shareholders, Cambricon finally won the applause of the market — achieving its first annual profit since listing.

In the first half of 2026, this high-growth momentum has not weakened but increased: the first-half revenue was 5.996 billion yuan, up 108% year on year; the net profit attributable to shareholders was 2.311 billion yuan, up 123% year on year. Compared with 2025, Cambricon took only half a year to earn more net profit than the total of the whole of last year.

The dual resonance of stock price and performance has made this equity incentive a real wealth, not a superficial "paper wealth", and also made everyone understand one thing: the era of domestic AI chips has truly arrived.

Another 944 people will share 3 billion yuan

Before the wealth effect of the first batch of cashing dissipates, Cambricon has dropped another deep-water "bomb".

Recently, Cambricon announced its 2026 restricted stock incentive plan, proposing to grant 4 million shares to 944 employees for the first time at a grant price of 750 yuan per share, with a corresponding value of about 3 billion yuan. The 944 employees account for about 85% of the total number of the company's employees, which means that from chip design engineers to algorithm researchers, even sales or administrative staff, almost all staff are included in this "wealth creation" game.

In other words, under the equity value of 3 billion yuan, these 944 employees will be allocated a per capita granted market value of about 3.18 million yuan. But this is only the starting point. If we refer to the current stock price of 1,120 yuan per share, the corresponding book income of these employees granted equity incentives will increase by another 50%.

But on the other side of the coin, the share-based payment expense as high as 2.02 billion yuan will be amortized over four years. From 2026 to 2029, this expense will erode Cambricon's profits by about 790 million yuan, 620 million yuan, 420 million yuan and 190 million yuan respectively. For a company that has just entered the profit track, this will undoubtedly put pressure on short-term performance and profits.

The greater challenge lies in the major test of performance targets. According to the draft, the incentive objects must complete the cumulative revenue target of 100 billion yuan from 2026 to 2028, with a trigger value of 80 billion yuan, and different types of incentive objects (Category I, II and III) are also superimposed with differentiated assessments of net profit growth.

Specifically, Cambricon requires the incentive objects to achieve a revenue of 13.5 billion yuan in 2026, and the cumulative revenue will sprint to 40.5 billion yuan in 2027. Based on the cumulative revenue target of 100 billion yuan in three years, Cambricon needs to achieve a revenue of 59.5 billion yuan in 2028 alone.

However, in the capital market, some institutions have made optimistic predictions: Cambricon's revenue in 2028 is expected to reach 61 billion yuan. This means that in the next three years, Cambricon is expected to outperform the highest expectation of the whole market.

The collective charge of domestic chips

Optimists always choose to move forward.

In the past, historical performance has given this leading AI chip company sufficient confidence: the revenue was 1.174 billion yuan in 2024, soared to 6.497 billion yuan in 2025, and reached 5.996 billion yuan in the first half of 2026 — a series of growth has allowed the company to turn the "impossible" into real figures in financial reports.

Looking at the present, under the wave of AI large models, computing power has become a must-contend area. Cambricon's radical move is not an isolated case, but an active breakthrough of the entire domestic AI chip industry under the trend of the times.

The first is the verification from the market. According to IDC data, in the domestic market in 2025, the total shipment of Chinese AI accelerator cards was about 4 million, of which domestic manufacturers delivered 1.65 million, and the market share exceeded 40% for the first time, rising to 41%. In particular, the centralized procurement by operators and state-owned intelligent computing centers has pushed domestic chips to the position of "standard configuration". Cambricon's performance has also confirmed this point.

In contrast to the vigorous progress of the domestic camp, NVIDIA's market share in China has shrunk rapidly from 95% to about 55%. As one falls and another rises, Morgan Stanley's prediction in its research report is more radical: by the end of 2026, the market share of domestic chips in China is expected to "turn the tables", Huawei's Ascend is expected to occupy 62% of the share, and Cambricon will take 14% right after it.

Secondly, the greater change lies in the innovation at the technical paradigm level. In 2026, at WAIC, Huawei's Ascend 950 super node was exhibited offline for the first time — 1024 NPUs are interconnected at high speed and work collaboratively to provide surging computing power of 1EFLOPS. MetaX, T-head, Sugon and other companies have also shown their super node solutions one after another. Gao Wen, director of Peng Cheng Laboratory, even said bluntly: Super node has become a new paradigm for AI infrastructure construction.

Compared with NVIDIA's single card that "crushes in performance", domestic chips are taking a different breakthrough path in their own way — making up for the gap of single card with system-level capabilities, and building a "computing power factory" through high-speed interconnection, unified memory addressing and full-stack software adaptation. This makes the market, while overestimating the short-term difficulty for domestic single cards to catch up with NVIDIA, also underestimate its winning odds and cashing speed at the system level.

At the same time, the outbreak of AI inference demand has also opened a differentiated window for domestic chips. According to IDC's forecast, inference will account for more than 70% of intelligent computing power demand by 2027. Inference scenarios pay more attention to system cost and energy efficiency ratio, rather than the peak computing power of a single card — which is exactly the advantageous battlefield of domestic super nodes.

In this context, domestic AI chip companies are gearing up: Cambricon uses the 100-billion-yuan revenue target to force all staff to sprint, Huawei redefines computing power infrastructure with super nodes, Alibaba, Baidu, MetaX, Moore Threads and other companies also show their respective strengths.

But it is undeniable that how far this road can go still depends on the breakthrough of process bottlenecks, the maturity of software ecology, and whether new technical routes such as CPO (co-packaged optics) can be commercialized on a large scale. But it is foreseeable that after the equity incentives of 124 people are cashed out first and 944 people are deeply bound, Cambricon has proved with real money that the breakthrough of domestic AI chips is not a game of a lone hero, but an industrial partnership "value co-creation" with rules, cashing and future.

This article is from the WeChat official account "ChinaVenture", author: Chen Mei, published with authorization from 36Kr.