Two chipmakers in Fujian province made RMB 1.174 billion of profit between them last quarter while the robot companies they supply are still hunting for orders.
Rockchip of Fuzhou reported third-quarter revenue of RMB 1.573 billion, up 43.57 per cent, and net profit of RMB 473 million, up 90.49 per cent. SigmaStar of Xiamen reported revenue of RMB 1.917 billion, up 151 per cent, and net profit of RMB 701 million, up 753 per cent, more than twice its entire 2025 net profit in a single quarter.
One sells the cerebellum, the other sells the eyes
Rockchip supplies the motion and perception layer. Its RK3588 and RK3576 chips handle visual recognition, three-dimensional mapping and path planning, while RK182X AI coprocessors cover heavier multimodal inference. The company disclosed a robot data-collection line covering multi-sensor input, synchronised capture, image processing and encoded transmission, which means it earns from robot training rigs before a single commercial unit ships.
SigmaStar supplies vision. It holds 41.2 per cent of the security camera chip segment and, by 2024 shipments, is the world’s largest visual AI SoC supplier, with roughly four of every ten network camera main chips. Its robot vision chips shipped more than 10 million units in 2025, five times the prior year, for 23 per cent global share and second place. In the first half of 2026 it shipped 5.5 million.
The demand is not really robotics yet
Both companies are profiting from an installed base being re-chipped. Hundreds of millions of cameras in service are moving to edge AI silicon, and SigmaStar’s edge AI business posted RMB 1.764 billion of first-half revenue at a 55.55 per cent gross margin. Rockchip’s growth comes from industrial inspection equipment and automotive cockpits, markets that already have budgets.
Policy is pushing the same direction. The State Council’s AI Plus action plan requires next-generation intelligent terminals to exceed 70 per cent penetration by 2027, which turns edge silicon from an accessory into infrastructure.
The part the profit line hides
SigmaStar held RMB 3.182 billion of inventory at the end of September, up RMB 2.252 billion since the start of the year, while nine-month operating cash flow reached only RMB 422 million against RMB 1.564 billion of net profit. Rockchip said rising memory, passive component and PCB prices are squeezing supply and delaying some customer production, which pushed chip orders out.
The competitive clock is also running. Qualcomm launched its Dragonwing IQ10 robotics line in January and is working with Figure on next-generation compute architecture, and the two Fujian firms list each other as competitors. Core component localisation in quadruped robots already exceeds 75 per cent. Localisation of high-end robot compute has barely started.
Robot makers are burning cash to find a market. Their chip suppliers are already being paid to help them look.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-11/ART-8321201-12003-30710025.html.