Profile of China's Bitmain, which is a major player in bitcoin mining rig market, controls 29% of Bitcoin hash rate, and is entering deep learning ASIC market
Two years ago, a Chinese chip-design expert named Micree Zhan was reading China's seminal science-fiction novel, The Three-Body Problem …
Context & Ripple Effects
This Quartz profile lands at the moment Bitmain stops being just a bitcoin story. The company already designs the ASICs behind roughly 29% of Bitcoin's hash rate, and the profile's news is that it is pointing that same chip-design machine at deep learning — a pivot from selling rigs to miners toward competing in AI silicon. Weeks later, Sequoia and IDG Capital moved to back a $50M round, signaling that mainstream venture capital saw the same platform potential.
The arc since confirms the thesis: CEO Jihan Wu disclosed $3.5B in 2017 revenues from the mining business, former design director Yang Zuoxing spun out rival chip developer Bitewei with about $20M raised, and by 2025 Bitmain and peers building 90%+ of mining rigs were establishing US manufacturing footholds amid the tariff war.
First-order effects
- Bitmain's mining-rig cash flows now fund an entry into deep learning ASICs, putting a company whose core competence was bitcoin hardware directly against established AI chip vendors.
- With control of about 29% of Bitcoin's hash rate concentrated in one vendor's equipment, Bitmain's strategic priorities — including this AI diversification — carry weight for the Bitcoin network itself.
Second-order effects
- Bitmain's move validates the mining-ASIC skill set as transferable, and the talent spillover is immediate: ex-design-director Yang Zuoxing's Bitewei shows competitors forming directly from Bitmain's own bench.
- Geopolitics reshapes the customer map — the 2025 push by Bitmain, Canaan, and MicroBT into US assembly lines shows the same rig makers repositioning manufacturing to keep serving American buyers under tariffs.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, crypto-mining chipmakers become a standing on-ramp into AI compute supply: capital, packaging know-how, and volume manufacturing honed on mining rigs get redeployed toward deep learning silicon, blurring the line between the two hardware industries.
- Concentration compounds on both fronts — a handful of Chinese-origin firms controlling most rig production while also expanding into AI chips makes their siting decisions (Texas or Florida HQs, domestic-equipment rules in China) a structural variable in both the Bitcoin network and the AI supply chain.
The trend: Crypto-mining chipmakers are converting mining-scale silicon expertise and profits into positions in the AI hardware supply chain, with geopolitics forcing where that capacity physically lands.