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Cambricon SUPPLY CHAIN TRACE

CHIP DESIGNERS🇨🇳 China · 688256 · STAR

Cambricon Technologies is a Beijing-based AI chip company, listed on China's STAR Market since 2020, that designs the MLU (Machine Learning Unit) series of AI accelerators fabricated by SMIC. Placed on the US Entity List in December 2020, Cambricon is restricted from US-origin technology and serves the Chinese domestic cloud and enterprise market as a SMIC-fabbed alternative to NVIDIA GPUs.

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SMIC

China's largest foundry; capped at 14nm without EUV access; Entity Listed 2020

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FOUNDRIESfabricates MLU AI accelerator dies for

Cadence

Leading EDA software provider; IC design tools (Virtuoso, Genus, Innovus) used by every advanced chip designer; US export-controlled to Chinese entities since 2022

Chokepoint🇺🇸
EDA TOOLSprovides EDA tools to (restricted since BIS Entity List Dec 2020)

Synopsys

Largest EDA software provider; IC design and verification tools (Design Compiler, PrimeTime, VCS) essential for all advanced chip tapeouts; US export-controlled to Chinese entities

Chokepoint🇺🇸
EDA TOOLSprovides EDA tools to (restricted since BIS Entity List Dec 2020)

↓ all supply to Cambricon ↓

Cambricon

China's publicly listed AI chip designer (STAR Market); MLU-series accelerators used in domestic cloud and edge AI; Entity Listed Dec 2020, now fabbed at SMIC

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↓ Cambricon supplies to ↓

Alibaba Cloud

China's #1 cloud provider; deploys Alibaba Hanguang 800 AI chip (TSMC-fabbed) and Huawei Ascend; operates Qwen LLM

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CLOUD PROVIDERSsupplies MLU AI accelerators to

ByteDance

TikTok/Douyin parent; one of the world's largest AI compute buyers; cut off from NVIDIA H100/H200 by Oct 2023 BIS advanced computing rules

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CLOUD PROVIDERSsupplies MLU AI accelerators to

Tencent Cloud

China's #2 cloud provider; major AI GPU buyer pivoting to H20/Huawei Ascend after BIS export controls; operates Hunyuan LLM

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CLOUD PROVIDERSsupplies MLU AI accelerators to

Baidu

China's leading AI pioneer; designs Kunlun AI chips (Samsung-fabbed); operates ERNIE Bot LLM; major AI cloud infrastructure provider

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CLOUD PROVIDERSsupplies MLU AI accelerators to

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About this company

QWhat is Cambricon's role in the AI chip supply chain?

China's publicly listed AI chip designer (STAR Market); MLU-series accelerators used in domestic cloud and edge AI; Entity Listed Dec 2020, now fabbed at SMIC

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