(Yicai Global) Aug. 12 -- Cambricon Technologies, a Chinese artificial intelligence chipmaker, almost doubled its net loss in the first six months of this year amid huge expenditures in research and development and talent acquisition.

Net loss widened by 94 percent to CNY392 million (USD60.5 million) in the first half from a year ago as the firm stepped up its efforts to lure talents, the Beijing-based company said in its earnings report yesterday.

But sales were rising. Revenue jumped 58 percent to CNY138 million due to the widening application of its edge AI chips and accelerator cards.

R&D

Cambricon's R&D spending rose almost by half to CNY416 million. Meanwhile, the company offered CNY78.3 million (USD12.1 million) worth of stock incentives to employees, a massive increase from the earlier CNY1.4 million (USD216,240). The firm went public in July 2020.

Most of the firm's income came from its edge AI chip and accelerator card business. Such revenues soared by more than eight times to CNY83.7 million, making up over 60 percent of the total. Another important product segment was training servers as such revenue reached CNY26 million.

Cambricon, which used to count Huawei Technologies as one of its major clients before the phonemaker started developing its own semiconductors, makes chips used in cloud servers and edge computing equipment.

Cambricon's stock price [SHA: 688256] closed unchanged at CNY103.65 (USD16) today. The shares have slumped by more than 60 percent since the firm's listing.

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi