CEO Jihan Wu of Bitmain, one of the world's largest bitcoin mining equipment maker, says the company had booked $3.5B in revenues in 2017
Even by the standards of Bitcoin, things are crazy in China. As the boom in cryptocurrencies has become the biggest speculative bubble in recorded history … Tweets: @thestalwart Tweets: Joe Weisenthal / @thestalwart : Here's a big BusinessWeek story about Bitmain — the world's largest maker of cryptocurrency mining chips — and how they're pushing into new business areas https://www.bloomberg.com/... via @chafkin and @davidramli
Context & Ripple Effects
Jihan Wu's $3.5B revenue figure lands eight months after a Quartz profile found Bitmain controlled 29% of Bitcoin's hash rate and was already moving into deep learning ASICs, and two months after Sequoia and IDG Capital put money into a $50M round. The disclosure also independently corroborates Bernstein's estimate of $3B–$4B in 2017 operating profit — meaning most of that revenue appears to have dropped to the bottom line.
The number matters because it sizes the war chest behind Bitmain's push beyond mining rigs into new silicon markets, and because seven years later the same supplier relationship becomes a liability: US miners now report equipment delays from Bitmain and other Chinese suppliers amid heightened customs scrutiny.
First-order effects
- The confirmed $3.5B makes Bitmain one of the most profitable chip companies of the 2017 cycle, validating the Sequoia–IDG bet and giving Wu capital to fund the deep-learning ASIC expansion flagged in the earlier profile.
Second-order effects
- A supplier with this much cash and 29% hash-rate control can outspend rivals on next-generation miner design and subsidize entry into AI chips, pressuring both competing rig makers and established ASIC vendors.
Third-order effects
- The 2025 customs delays show the flip side of that concentration: US mining operators built fleets on a single Chinese equipment source, so export-control friction converts directly into deployment bottlenecks for American miners.
The trend: Crypto-mining windfalls are funding Chinese chip designers' expansion into adjacent silicon markets, with the eventual geopolitical backlash against that supply concentration already visible in US customs treatment.