Conglian Group’s newly released 2025 results were a shock: full-year revenue fell by more than 20% year on year to 221 million yuan, while the company swung from a net profit of more than 50 million yuan last year to a net loss of 52 million yuan.

In just one year, it swung from profit to loss. A homegrown Chinese company, Canaan Creative was founded in Shanghai in 2017, with its R&D and supply chain based domestically, making it a typical Chinese team that went public in the U.S.

Co-founded by Ding Qiang and Sheng Chaohua, the two core founders shaped the company’s technical DNA and strategic direction.

Ding Qiang, the company’s founder, has served as chairman and CEO since its inception. He has more than 16 years of experience in integrated circuit design, having previously worked at Freescale Semiconductor and Infotmic, where he held roles including R&D director and assistant to the president. He has built deep experience in applying technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. After leaving Infotmic in 2017, Ding moved decisively into the blockchain industry and founded ChainUp Group.

Co-founder Sheng Chaohua serves as the company’s chief technology officer and a director. He also has more than 16 years of experience in integrated circuit design and oversees the company’s R&D management. A Fudan University graduate, Sheng previously held roles including R&D manager and chief technology officer, bringing a strong technical foundation to the company’s chip development.

Built on the technical foundation of its two founders, ChainLink’s global headquarters and core R&D center are located in Shanghai’s Lingang Science and Technology City, with its core operations and technical teams based in China.

The management team is led by senior technical experts including Ding Qiang and Sheng Chaohua. Many of its members come from top universities and have extensive experience in integrated circuits.

Its business model was also shrewd: it stayed away from brutally competitive Bitcoin mining and focused instead on building dedicated mining rigs for “niche cryptocurrencies” such as Dogecoin.

With robust in-house chips, it captured nearly 70% of this niche market and, in the early bull-market years, did indeed make a fortune.

But specialization cuts both ways. Intchains’ steep losses today stem precisely from a business that is too narrow, leaving the company trapped in a cycle-dependent market where fortunes rise and fall with conditions beyond its control.

1. The Mining Rig Business Collapsed: As the Aleo Boom Fades, Warehouses Are Filled With “Scrap Metal”

Intchains’ biggest pain point in 2025 is written directly into the “cost of revenue” line of its financial report.

Full-year costs surged 57% to as much as 205 million.

The money is not being spent to expand production, but because the company is stuck with inventory it cannot move.

Put simply, revenue is collapsing, but the mining rigs piling up in warehouses cannot be sold. The company can only write them down at scrap-metal prices, so the book cost has naturally surged.

The sudden loss of sales momentum stems from the short shelf life of their hit products.

Intchains’ flagship product, the Aleo mining rig, was still a money-printing machine in short supply in the first quarter. By the third quarter, it had collapsed rapidly.

Quarterly revenue plunged 84.8% year on year, collapsing from nearly 60 million yuan to 9.1 million yuan. That is the fatal business flaw of mining rigs for non-mainstream cryptocurrencies: there is no fallback.

Demand for computing power from mainstream cryptocurrencies remains stable, and retired mining rigs can still recover some value on the secondhand market.

But for those niche tokens, the hype usually lasts only six to 12 months.

Once the frenzy faded, the mining rigs built specifically for it instantly became scrap metal, with no residual value.

More importantly, capital is now concentrating in top-tier assets. The ten largest tokens account for 82% of the market, while Conglian’s core customer base, small and mid-sized miners who specialized in taking bets on niche coins, is rapidly exiting.

To survive, Intchains has no choice but to turn the knife inward.

In the fourth quarter, they cut R&D spending by 71.6%, leaving just 13.1 million.

Layoffs, restructuring and asset sales are all on the table. A person familiar with the matter said: “The priority now comes down to two words: survival. In 2026, the company has to get through with the leanest possible model.” Next, the company is pinning its hopes for a turnaround on a Dogecoin mining rig slated for mass production in the second half of 2026.

But the question remains: how long can Dogecoin’s momentum last?

II. 9,070 Ether: From “Selling Shovels” to “Holding Coins for Yield”

With its core mining rig business struggling to move inventory, Conglian has found a new way out: buying and holding Ethereum (ETH) itself.

By February 2026, they were sitting on 9,070 ETH, with an average cost basis of $2,611.

In just a year and a half, its coin holdings have grown nearly fivefold, with more than $20 million sunk into the bet.

And simply sitting on the stockpile feels like a loss; they want the money to make more money.

Intchains went further, spending $1.3 million to acquire a digital asset yield platform and move into a staking business that resembles earning interest on deposited crypto.

They have already spread 2,600 ETH across their own and third-party platforms, chasing a target annualized yield of 10%.

But this weather-dependent approach is not for the faint of heart.

Ethereum’s sharp rally in the second quarter handed the company a sizable gain. But when prices reversed and sold off in the fourth quarter, its paper profits plunged almost overnight.

After a year of effort, the paper gains from this digital-asset investment shrank by 77% from the previous year.

Faced with that kind of volatility, Wall Street analysts could no longer sit still on the earnings call.

When pressed on capital safety, executive Yan Chaowei could only promise that the company would “diversify its investments.” Others probed whether, given the difficulty of selling mining rigs, it had considered shifting into the hottest business of the moment: AI chips.

Intchains’ answer was unusually definitive: it has no plans to move into AI. The company is staying firmly focused on the crypto market and steering clear of AI altogether.

The strategy has divided even institutional investors.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, Wall Street stalwart Goldman Sachs raised its stake by more than fivefold, while quant giant Renaissance Technologies walked away entirely, selling every share it held. The traditional investment bank is betting on a rebound from the bottom; the quant fund has run out of patience.

III. China Ban and Delisting Risk: Pressure From Both Sides

At this critical moment, the external environment dealt Intchains another setback: first, the domestic market ran into a supply crunch.

On February 6, 2026, the People’s Bank of China and seven other agencies jointly issued a notice stating that mining rig manufacturers may not provide mining rig sales or related services within mainland China.

Intchains can only stop taking domestic orders immediately. Although executives tried to reassure the market in the earnings report, saying the company would offset the blow by accelerating its overseas expansion, more than half of its revenue, 54.5%, still comes from China. The short-term pain from this shift is unavoidable.

Then the capital markets warning light also turned red.

Intchains’ share price has fallen from $8 at listing to $1.28, wiping out 84% of its market value. Its current $50 million market capitalization has not yet crossed Nasdaq’s $5 million mandatory delisting threshold, but the company is already walking a fine line.

More troubling is the continuing cash drain inside the company. On paper, Canaan still has 470 million yuan in cash and just over 40 million yuan in liabilities, so the balance sheet has not collapsed. The awkward reality is that its core business is not making money, and its cash reserves shrank 28% in a year.

The door to new revenue has been blocked, while cash is still pouring out of the company’s accounts. Intchains’ current position can be summed up this way: its core business is waiting for a market turn, its balance sheet is heavily committed to asset bets, and its costs are being squeezed as hard as possible.

With 9,070 Ether on its balance sheet, the company is now effectively tied to Ethereum. If the price rises, its books recover; if it falls, the losses deepen. In its legacy mining rig business, whether new products can deliver another breakout hit remains uncertain.

Capital is now concentrating faster around leading assets, and the niche “gap market” that Cango has relied on is visibly narrowing.

Facing that bind, the company’s executives still said on the earnings call that they “remain optimistic about the appreciation potential of the digital assets held by the company.” But for a company losing $52 million a year and down 84% in the stock market, that optimism has come at a painfully high price.