In a dramatic turnaround fueled by geopolitical tensions, Chinese computer prodigy Chen Tianshi has emerged as one of the world's wealthiest self-made billionaires, with his fortune skyrocketing to $22.5 billion despite nearly losing his entire business just five years ago.
From Near-Collapse to Meteoric Rise
The year 2019 marked a critical juncture for Chen Tianshi's artificial intelligence chip startup, Cambricon Technologies. The company faced potential disaster when Huawei Technologies Co., which accounted for over 95% of its revenue, abruptly severed ties to develop its own semiconductors. The future looked bleak for the three-year-old venture.
However, an unexpected geopolitical shift turned the tide. The US decision to restrict China's access to cutting-edge chips, combined with Beijing's determination to foster homegrown technology, created a perfect storm of opportunity. This environment generated both state sponsorship and a vast protected market for Cambricon, propelling Chen into the global billionaire ranks.
Shares of Cambricon Technologies have experienced an extraordinary 765% surge over the past 24 months. Chen's wealth, primarily derived from his 28% stake in the Beijing-based AI accelerator producer, has more than doubled since the beginning of the year according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The Geopolitical Windfall
Chen's remarkable ascent highlights how China's vigorous support for its domestic AI industry is creating a new class of state-aligned tech elites. This development comes just years after Beijing cracked down on private-sector giants, signaling a strategic shift in technological priorities.
As Washington's export restrictions limited China's access to advanced chips, companies like Cambricon emerged as national champions. These firms benefit from policy mandates and investor enthusiasm, representing a new industrial paradigm where political favor rather than market freedom determines winners.
The catalyst for Cambricon's recent stock surge came in August when Beijing encouraged local companies to avoid using market leader Nvidia Corp.'s H20 processors, particularly for government-related applications. This directive created immediate demand for domestic alternatives like Cambricon's offerings.
Questions About Sustainability
Observers remain divided about how long Cambricon's impressive run can continue, with debates focusing on whether government protectionism rather than chip competitiveness drives the company's success.
Shen Meng, director at Beijing-based investment bank Chanson & Co., expressed caution: "Cambricon's explosive revenue growth is mainly due to a low starting point, and its current valuation may be inflated without sustained policy support."
The company itself has attempted to temper investor enthusiasm. In an August filing to the Shanghai stock exchange, Cambricon warned that it still operates under US sanctions and emphasized the challenges of advancing up the technology ladder. The company also dispelled speculation about non-existent products in development.
While brokerage notes mentioned Cambricon's upcoming Siyuan 690 chip, industry experts believe it still trails Nvidia's corresponding products by several years.
Sunny Cheung, a researcher at Washington-based think tank Jamestown Foundation, noted the significant technological hurdles: "It's too early to say if Cambricon or Huawei, the leading AI chip designer in China, will become China's Nvidia, as Nvidia's full stack including the CUDA ecosystem is extraordinarily hard to replicate quickly."
The Academic Prodigy's Journey
Chen's path to success represents a case study in China's state-supported academic pipeline, which also facilitated the breakthrough of AI startup DeepSeek and its millennial founder Liang Wenfeng.
Born in 1985 in Nanchang to an electrical engineer father and history teacher mother, Chen demonstrated exceptional intellectual abilities from an early age. Both he and his older brother, Chen Yunji, were fast-tracked into a program for gifted students at Hefei's prestigious University of Science and Technology of China, where Chen earned his PhD in computer science in 2010.
The brothers subsequently joined as researchers at the computing institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the nation's scientific hub funded by state resources. It was here they first gained international recognition with acclaimed academic papers on their DianNao accelerator in 2014.
A year later, they introduced their first chip—a brain-inspired processor for deep learning. They named the component Cambricon, referencing the Cambrian explosion to symbolize it as an evolutionary starting point for AI.
Business Evolution Amid Challenges
In 2016, the Cambricon project spun off into an independent company with the Chinese Academy of Sciences as an early financial backer. The venture achieved its first significant breakthrough in 2017 when Huawei utilized Cambricon's AI processor technology to enhance photography and gaming capabilities in its Mate 10 smartphone.
After Huawei ended the partnership in 2019 to develop similar technology independently, Cambricon shifted focus toward designing and selling AI chips for both cloud servers and edge devices.
The company went public on Shanghai's Sci-Tech Innovation Board in 2020 but consistently operated at a loss until it recorded its first quarterly profits in the three-month period through December 2024.
Cambricon faced another challenge in 2022 when the US Department of Commerce added the company to its entity list, citing efforts to "acquire US-origin items in support of China's military modernization." This move restricted Cambricon's access to advanced Western technologies.
Paradoxically, US restrictions ultimately benefited Cambricon. When Washington expanded export controls to block Nvidia and AMD from selling high-performance AI chips to China, it created a supply vacuum. Beijing responded forcefully, mandating that domestic tech firms "buy local," requiring Chinese companies to source at least some chips from domestic manufacturers like Huawei or Cambricon.
The result was explosive demand. Cambricon's revenue surged more than 500% over the past 12 months, despite competition from Huawei and numerous other domestic startups.
Shuman Ghosemajumder, co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based AI startup Reken, contextualized Cambricon's rise: "Their rise is directly caused by the urgent need for countries to have access to hardware infrastructure. Similar to Nvidia, I think they will likely encounter a lot of variance in their stock price as people decide exactly how much infrastructure is required for practically useful generative AI models, and how much those expectations have been overhyped."
Chen's wealth accumulation places him as the third richest person in the world at or under age 40, behind only Lukas Walton and Mark Mateschitz, heirs to the Walmart and Red Bull fortunes respectively. While he still trails Nvidia founder Jensen Huang in net worth, his trajectory demonstrates how geopolitical realignments can create unexpected billionaires in the global technology landscape.
