SMIC Tops $3 Billion Quarterly Revenue for First Time, Raises Wafer Prices on AI Demand

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp reported August 14 that Q2 2026 revenue topped $3 billion for the first time — $3.01 billion, up 20% quarter-on-quarter and 36.1% year-on-year — with gross margin rising to 25.3% from 20.1% in Q1 and profit attributable to shareholders nearly tripling to $479.2 million from $132.5 million a year earlier, Reuters and Bloomberg reported. Both figures beat analyst estimates. SMIC shipped 2.9 million 8-inch-equivalent wafers, up 14% quarter-on-quarter, while average selling prices rose 5.7% after the company secured higher prices in Q1 customer negotiations that will extend into Q3. Co-CEO Zhao Haijun said 'there's still a big gap between industry-leading wafer prices and SMIC's current prices, so we need to negotiate with customers for fairer pricing,' attributing volume gains to AI-related demand spanning computing, industrial, and automotive chip categories beyond traditional CPU/GPU orders. Utilization climbed to 93.7%, monthly 8-inch-equivalent capacity rose 1.7% to 1.1 million wafers, and the company added 8,000 wafers of monthly 12-inch capacity. China accounted for 90% of Q2 revenue versus 8% from the US. SMIC said it will begin breaking out AI chip revenue as a separate reporting category given rising demand, guided Q3 revenue up 2-4% quarter-on-quarter, and reported H1 capex of $3.4 billion with full-year amortization expected near $5 billion, up 30% year-on-year. Bloomberg noted the results renewed investor focus on Chinese hardware stocks over internet platforms, whose consumer-demand recovery remains uneven.