SMIC

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is China's largest domestic pure-play semiconductor foundry, founded in April 2000 and headquartered in Shanghai. The company manufactures integrated circuits on contract for Chinese and global fabless customers including Huawei, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Texas Instruments, with the most advanced process technology available within the People's Republic of China after the 2020 US export-control restrictions on extreme ultraviolet lithography. As of May 2026, SMIC is the principal manufacturer of the Huawei Ascend AI accelerator line through its 7-nanometer-class N+2 process and is one of the structurally consequential companies in the Chinese AI-compute supply chain.

At a glance

• Founded: April 3, 2000 in the Cayman Islands by Richard Chang. Headquartered in Shanghai. Listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (0981.HK) and Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market (688981.SS).
• Status: Public. Market capitalization above $50 billion USD as of early 2026. Third-largest contract chip manufacturer globally as of 2024 by revenue.
• Funding: Public-market financing on Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges. Reported full-year 2025 revenue of approximately $9.3 billion, up 16.2 percent year on year, with net profit of $685 million.
• CEO: Haijun Zhao, Co-Chief Executive Officer (since 2017). Liang Mong Song, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director (since 2017). Zixue Zhou, Chairman.
• Other notable leadership: Liang Mong Song is the principal process-technology architect, with prior senior roles at TSMC and Samsung. The 14-nanometer, 7-nanometer, and reported 5-nanometer process developments at SMIC trace to his arrival.
• Open weights: Not applicable. SMIC is a foundry, not a model producer.
• Flagship products: N+1 (7-nanometer-class first generation), N+2 (7-nanometer-class second generation, the principal node for Huawei Ascend production), reported 5-nanometer-class process under development for production starting 2026, plus mature nodes from 28-nanometer through 0.35-micron used by domestic Chinese fabless customers.

Origins

SMIC was founded in April 2000 by Richard Chang, a Taiwanese-American semiconductor executive with prior senior roles at Texas Instruments. The founding capital base combined Taiwanese and US private investment with backing from the Chinese government, structured around a Cayman Islands incorporation and Shanghai operating headquarters. The founding business model mirrored TSMC's pure-play foundry approach, manufacturing chips for external designers rather than competing in chip design.

The 2000s and early 2010s were characterized by SMIC's focus on mature and trailing-edge process nodes, with leading-edge process technology lagging TSMC and Samsung by multiple generations. A series of patent and intellectual-property disputes with TSMC, including litigation that resulted in a $200 million settlement and equity payment to TSMC in 2009, anchored international perception of SMIC's leading-edge capability gap relative to the Taiwanese leader.

The 2017 arrival of Liang Mong Song as Co-Chief Executive Officer marked the structurally consequential transition in SMIC's process-technology trajectory. Liang had previously been a senior process-development executive at TSMC, where he led FinFET development at the 14-nanometer node, before moving to Samsung Foundry to lead the 14-nanometer process there. His arrival at SMIC initiated the 14-nanometer FinFET development that reached volume production in 2019, followed by the 7-nanometer-class N+1 process in 2021 and the N+2 second-generation 7-nanometer-class process by 2023.

The 2020 to 2024 period was structurally consequential for SMIC's role in the Chinese AI-compute supply chain. The December 2020 addition to the US Department of Commerce Entity List restricted SMIC's access to extreme ultraviolet lithography systems from ASML, the principal capital-equipment supplier for sub-7-nanometer nodes globally. Without EUV, SMIC's leading-edge process technology has been built using older deep-ultraviolet lithography systems with multi-patterning, with industry analysis characterizing this approach as economically inefficient compared with EUV-based production but technically capable of producing 7-nanometer-class chips. The Huawei Ascend 910B and Ascend 910C AI accelerators, fabricated on SMIC's N+1 and N+2 processes respectively, have been the principal validating commercial deployments of this approach.

The 2025 to 2026 period has seen SMIC's reported development of a 5-nanometer-class process targeting Huawei's next-generation AI accelerators, with industry coverage describing the program as critical to the Chinese AI-compute supply chain through 2027 and beyond. SMIC reported full-year 2025 revenue of approximately $9.3 billion and is reportedly planning to double 7-nanometer-class capacity through 2026.

Mission and strategy

SMIC's stated mission is to be the principal Chinese semiconductor manufacturing foundry and to serve as the manufacturing-supply backbone for China's domestic semiconductor and electronics industries. The strategy reflects the dual constraints of US export-control restrictions on advanced semiconductor capital equipment and Chinese government priorities on semiconductor self-sufficiency under the broader Made in China 2025 industrial-policy framework.

The strategy combines three threads. First, leading-edge process technology development at the N+1, N+2, and reported 5-nanometer-class nodes, anchored by Liang Mong Song's process-development leadership and the Huawei Ascend production relationship. Second, mature-node capacity expansion at 28-nanometer through 90-nanometer for the broader Chinese fabless customer base, with multiple new 12-inch fabs under construction in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Tianjin. Third, applied capital investment in deep-ultraviolet lithography multi-patterning techniques and other workarounds for the EUV restriction.

The competitive premise is that semiconductor manufacturing self-sufficiency for China is a structurally important industrial-policy goal, that SMIC is the principal Chinese foundry capable of executing on that goal at the leading edge available to China, and that the geopolitical-supply-chain environment is unlikely to relax US export controls in the near term.

Products

• N+2 process node. 7-nanometer-class second-generation process. Principal manufacturing node for the Huawei Ascend 910C AI accelerator. Reported yields improved from approximately 20 percent in 2024 to approximately 40 percent in 2025 per industry coverage from Tom's Hardware and SemiAnalysis.
• N+1 process node. 7-nanometer-class first-generation process. Earlier Huawei Ascend 910B fabrication node. Volume production from 2021.
• 5-nanometer-class process. Reported under development for Huawei's next-generation AI accelerators, with mass-production targets in 2026 to 2027.
• 14-nanometer FinFET process. Volume production from 2019. Manufacturing node for various Chinese consumer-electronics and automotive customers.
• 28-nanometer and mature-node processes. Production at multiple Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Wuhan, and Shaoxing fabrication facilities. Customers include domestic Chinese fabless designers and global semiconductor customers including Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Texas Instruments.

Distribution channels are direct enterprise relationships with Chinese and global fabless semiconductor customers requiring access to Chinese-domestic manufacturing capacity.

Performance and positioning

SMIC's process-leadership position is the principal source of analytical attention from industry coverage. SemiAnalysis, TechInsights, and other technical analysts have consistently characterized SMIC's N+1 and N+2 processes as 7-nanometer-class equivalents to TSMC's N7 generation, with industry consensus that the absence of EUV lithography produces structurally lower yields and higher per-wafer costs than equivalent TSMC production. Bloomberg and Reuters reporting on the December 2025 Huawei Ascend 910C ramp characterized SMIC's reported 40-percent yield as approximately half the yield benchmark for equivalent TSMC processes.

SMIC's role as the principal manufacturer for substantially all of Huawei's domestic AI accelerator output through 2024 to 2026 has been the principal validating data point for the company's strategic position in the Chinese AI-compute supply chain. The Huawei Ascend chip-revenue projection of approximately $12 billion in 2026, reported by Tom's Hardware citing Huawei guidance, depends substantially on SMIC's 7-nanometer-class capacity ramp.

The geopolitical environment has continued to shape investment-analyst characterization of SMIC's outlook, with extended discussions in industry coverage about the implications of additional US export restrictions, the trajectory of Chinese-government subsidies, and the technical limits of multi-patterning lithography in the absence of EUV.

Leadership

As of May 2026, SMIC's senior leadership includes:

• Haijun Zhao, Co-Chief Executive Officer (since 2017). Long-tenured SMIC executive responsible for commercial operations, customer engagement, and international relationships.
• Liang Mong Song, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director (since 2017). Principal process-technology architect with prior senior roles at TSMC (FinFET development at 14-nanometer) and Samsung Foundry (14-nanometer process leadership).
• Zixue Zhou, Chairman.
• Senior process-development, manufacturing, and customer-engagement leadership across the SMIC organization.

The Liang Mong Song appointment in 2017 has been the principal leadership transition in SMIC's recent history, with industry coverage characterizing his arrival as the leading factor in the company's leading-edge process-technology progress through 2019 to 2026.

Financials

Public-market listings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (0981.HK) and Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market (688981.SS). Reported full-year 2025 revenue of approximately $9.3 billion, up 16.2 percent year on year, with net profit of approximately $685 million. The 2024 revenue was approximately $8.0 billion. Annual capital expenditure has been reported at approximately $7.3 billion in 2024, focused substantially on capacity expansion at the leading-edge nodes available to China and at 28-nanometer mature nodes.

Industry position

SMIC occupies a structurally distinctive position as the principal Chinese pure-play semiconductor foundry and the principal manufacturing partner for substantially all of Huawei's domestic AI accelerator output. Industry coverage has consistently characterized SMIC as one of the structurally consequential companies in the Chinese AI-compute supply chain, with the leading-edge process-technology position relative to other Chinese foundries (Hua Hong Semiconductor, Nexchip, others) as the principal validating data point.

The structural position is constrained by the US export-control environment. Industry coverage has characterized SMIC's leading-edge production economics as substantially less efficient than equivalent TSMC production, with multi-patterning approaches producing structurally higher per-wafer costs than EUV-based production at comparable process nodes. Whether SMIC can sustain leading-edge production economics at the 5-nanometer-class node that has been reported as under development is a frequent topic of investment-analyst attention.

Competitive landscape

• TSMC. The global pure-play foundry leader and the principal benchmark for SMIC's process-technology progress. SMIC is structurally barred from competing for TSMC's leading-edge customer base by US export controls; the competitive overlap is concentrated at mature nodes and at customer relationships requiring China-domestic manufacturing access.
• Hua Hong Semiconductor. The second-largest Chinese foundry by revenue. Focused on mature and specialty process nodes (analog, power management, embedded non-volatile memory) rather than leading-edge logic. Limited overlap with SMIC's leading-edge production.
• Samsung Foundry. Direct leading-edge foundry competitor at the 5-nanometer through 2-nanometer nodes, with no direct overlap with SMIC's customer base given US export-control restrictions.
• Intel Foundry Services. Re-entry into the foundry market through 2024 to 2026, with structurally similar export-control restrictions on serving Chinese customers.
• GlobalFoundries. Foundry competitor focused on mature process nodes globally. Some overlap with SMIC's mature-node customer base outside China.
• Huawei HiSilicon, Cambricon, Biren, Moore Threads, MetaX, T-Head. Domestic Chinese fabless customers requiring SMIC's leading-edge manufacturing capacity for AI-accelerator production.
• ASML, Applied Materials, Lam Research, Tokyo Electron. Semiconductor capital-equipment suppliers, partially restricted from supplying SMIC under US export controls.

Outlook

• The reported 5-nanometer-class process development trajectory and any volume-production transition through 2026 to 2027.
• The Huawei Ascend chip-revenue ramp through 2026 and the corresponding pull on SMIC's 7-nanometer-class capacity.
• Yield-improvement trajectory at the N+2 node and the corresponding economics of multi-patterning approaches relative to EUV-based production.
• The geopolitical-supply-chain environment under continued US export controls and any extension or relaxation through 2026 and 2027.
• Capacity expansion across new 12-inch fabrication facilities in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Tianjin.
• The competitive dynamic against Hua Hong Semiconductor at mature nodes and the broader trajectory of Chinese semiconductor self-sufficiency.

Sources

• SMIC official site. Company reference.
• Wikipedia: Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. Company history reference.
• Trendforce: SMIC 1H25 net profit rises 35.6%, 7nm capacity reportedly to double in 2026. Capacity and earnings reference.
• SemiAnalysis: Huawei Ascend production ramp. N+2 process and yield reference.
• South China Morning Post: SMIC expects flat revenue as drop in low-end orders offsets AI chip growth. 2026 guidance reference.
• Bloomberg: China's Huawei and SMIC make progress with chips, report finds. Process-technology progress reference.
• Tom's Hardware: Huawei braces for $12 billion in AI chip revenue. Huawei Ascend revenue reference.
• Design & Reuse: Dr. Haijun Zhao, Dr. Liang Mong Song appointed as SMIC Co-CEO. Leadership appointment reference.