Record-Breaking Performance Failed to Halt Stock Price Decline, "Winter King" Stock Plummets Below 1,000 Yuan Mark

On March 23, the domestic AI chip leader Cambrian (688256.SH) experienced a morning decline. As of 10:53 a.m., the stock price fell more than 3%, trading at 993.72 yuan per share, officially breaking below the 1,000 yuan mark. Since the beginning of the year, Cambrian’s stock has declined by a total of 26.73%. Since reaching a historical high of 1,550 yuan per share on January 12, 2026, the stock has retraced by 36%, with its total market value shrinking from 654.1 billion yuan to 421.8 billion yuan, evaporating over 230 billion yuan.

Looking back to August 2025, Cambrian’s stock once surpassed Kweichow Moutai to become the highest-priced stock in A-shares, attracting significant attention from the capital market.

This trend contrasts sharply with the company’s recent record-breaking performance. On the evening of March 12, Cambrian released its 2025 financial report, achieving an operating revenue of 6.497 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 453.21%. The net profit attributable to the parent was 2.059 billion yuan, turning a loss of 452 million yuan in 2024 into a profit. This was the company’s first annual profit since its establishment in 2016.

Notably, the financial report also disclosed that well-known capital investor Zhang Jianping increased his holdings, adding 408,400 shares compared to the third quarter of 2025, reaching a total of 6.8149 million shares, accounting for 1.62% of the circulating shares, ranking as the fifth-largest shareholder. This marks Zhang Jianping’s second consecutive quarter of increasing his position in Cambrian; in Q3 2025, he added 320,200 shares.

Behind the stock price correction lies a profound change in the competitive landscape of the domestic AI chip sector. Industry-wise, competition in the domestic AI chip market has entered a fierce stage. As an important customer of Cambrian, cloud service providers are accelerating their in-house AI chip development, forming direct competition.

According to previous reports, Alibaba’s AI chip company Pingtouge’s Zhenwu PPU chip shipments have reached hundreds of thousands of units, surpassing Cambrian and leading among domestic GPU manufacturers, though this information has not been further confirmed by Cambrian. Baidu’s Kunlun Chip previously submitted a confidential application for a mainboard listing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 1. Its chips are used not only for Baidu’s internal AI projects but also shipped to other industry clients.

On the business front, Cambrian’s market advantage is not particularly prominent. Recently, the prospectus of Suiyuan Technology cited IDC data and publicly available information, showing that in China’s AI accelerator market in 2024, Nvidia’s market share was about 70%, while Cambrian and Suiyuan Technology each held around 1.4%. Mu Xi Co., Mooreside, and Biran Technology all held less than 1%, with AMD and TianShu ZhiXin also below 1%.

Despite short-term pressure on the stock price, some brokerages remain optimistic about Cambrian’s future. Donghai Securities believes that the domesticization rate of computing power chips is continuously increasing. Cambrian’s SiYuan series cloud AI chips are domestically leading in performance, with high recognition among top CSP manufacturers. As the new generation of high-value SiYuan chips commercialize, the company is expected to benefit fully from the trend of domestic AI infrastructure and AI chip localization, with further growth in performance.

(Disclaimer: The content of this article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Investors operate at their own risk.)