Chinese chipmaker Moore Threads, often described as "China's Nvidia" or "Nvidia alternative," reported fast revenue growth in the first half of 2026, which exceeded 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 1.736 billion yuan ($257 million) in first-half revenue, up 147.42 percent year-on-year. Gross profit reached 989 million yuan, up 103.78 percent, while net losses attributable to shareholders narrowed sharply by 95.73 percent, according to the financial results released on Sunday.

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 769 million yuan in the first half, up 38.16 percent year-on-year, bringing cumulative investment since 2022 close to 5.9 billion yuan. 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 the Hong Kong market. 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 on Sunday.

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 562 million yuan, up 75.37 percent 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 percent year-on-year growth in its revenue in the first quarter. The company estimated that its first-half revenue would grow 258.68-289.13 percent, 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 percent full-year growth in revenue in 2025, with gross profit up 210.8 percent.

Fellow AI chip leader Cambricon also delivered equally robust results on Friday. Its first-half revenue hit 5.996 billion yuan, up 108.13 percent year-on-year, while net profit attributable to shareholders rose 122.61 percent to 2.311 billion yuan.

Growth was driven by deeper partnerships with leading financial and internet firms and scaled commercial deployments. Cambricon said that it completed adaptation support for major Chinese open-source AI models including GLM, DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi and MiniMax, strengthening its domestic AI computing ecosystem.

Ma Jihua, a veteran industry insider, told the Global Times that multiple Chinese companies are advancing along different technological routes covering high-, mid- and low-end products.

"With rapidly expanding capacity, they are better meeting domestic needs and beginning to reach global markets, thereby promoting more accessible AI," said Ma.

"The AI technology sector's high prosperity is expected to persist, remaining a core investment theme with substantial medium- and long-term opportunities," said Yang.