A 94% revenue collapse. That single figure recasts everything else in Intchains Group’s Aug. 20 disclosure, and it explains why the company has abandoned the Ethereum buying plan it laid out six months ago.
First-half revenue at the Nasdaq-listed altcoin mining-machine maker came in at RMB11.1 million, or roughly $1.6 million, down from RMB175.6 million in the same period a year earlier. The composition of that figure is even less flattering: RMB10.9 million of it came from offloading non-core chip inventory to a related party.
Take that sale out of the equation and the core hardware operation is barely visible.
The treasury isn’t empty, so this is a choice
Numbers like these might suggest a company that has run dry. It hasn’t. Intchains closed June holding RMB461.1 million in cash and short-term investments — about $68 million — a sum it says is enough to fund the ASIC program internally and cover planned activities for at least 12 months.
That makes the pullback from crypto purchases a reallocation rather than a forced liquidation. The company said it no longer anticipates “material additional accumulation” of cryptocurrency as it directs capital toward developing and commercializing its next-generation ASIC and exploring AI opportunities. Its current treasury remains in place and continues generating staking yield.
February’s plan versus August’s plan
In February, Intchains outlined a dollar-cost-averaging approach to build up Ethereum steadily. By April, Chief Executive Officer Qiang Ding was saying the company would keep making prudent and opportunistic purchases.
Four months on, prudent and opportunistic has turned into no material additional accumulation. Firms seldom state outright that they’ve reversed course, but the wording does the work for them.
The position itself is not large. As of June 30, Intchains held roughly 9,176 units of ETH-based cryptocurrencies valued at RMB98.1 million. By Aug. 20, 4,556 ETH had been allocated to staking — 3,556 deposited via its Goldshell platform and awaiting validator activation, plus another 1,000 through FalconX.
Two holes in the same balance sheet
The half looks especially rough because the operating business and the crypto holdings deteriorated simultaneously.
Cost of revenue reached RMB22.1 million — double what the company actually took in — after Intchains wrote down surplus mining-machine inventory in the face of softer demand and falling selling prices. Machines that nobody orders still cost money to build.
ETH then declined, generating an RMB89.5 million fair-value loss of about $13.2 million. The combined result was an RMB148.9 million net loss for the first half, roughly $21.9 million, compared with a RMB4.3 million profit a year earlier.
China closed a door in February
Domestic regulators prohibited mining-machine manufacturers from offering sales and related services within the country, and Intchains halted new orders from the mainland. When your business is building mining hardware, the loss of a home market is more than a line item.
The chip that has to work
Everything in the turnaround plan hinges on a next-generation mining ASIC that finished tape-out in July. Sample production and validation are still ahead of it, with a commercial launch penciled in for the fourth quarter.
According to Ding, the new ASIC should make a modest revenue contribution during the second half of 2026 before turning into a more meaningful driver in 2027 as commercialization picks up.
“It is a core part of our strategy to build a more resilient, diversified revenue base,” he said.
Ding also said Intchains expects the platform to reinforce its standing in purpose-built mining hardware while boosting operating efficiency for customers. Consider the timeline investors are being asked to sign up for: modest this year, meaningful next year.
The AI part is a sentence, not a strategy
The company is separately weighing AI initiatives, acquisitions among them, as an additional path to longer-term growth and diversification. Ding described the effort as still early, with more concrete plans due next year.
That is the entirety of the disclosure. No products, no targets, no named acquisition. When a chipmaker whose revenue is collapsing invokes AI next to its actual roadmap, the two deserve very different weight.
Ethereum is up 4.87% over the past 24 hours.
The benchmark worth tracking is simple: does the ASIC ship in the fourth quarter as promised? The rest of what Intchains outlined is a 2027 story, and $68 million buys roughly 12 months of runway to reach it.