Intchains Group Limited (ICG)

Intchains describes itself as an altcoin company, altcoins being cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. It designs ASIC chips, each built for the one mining algorithm of a coin such as Litecoin, Dogecoin, Aleo, Kaspa or Alephium, and sells them built into its own mining machines under the Goldshell brand: 15 series and more than 30 models since 2024. It stopped selling bare chips by June 2024, so machines now bring in essentially all revenue. It also keeps Ethereum (ETH) as its main long-term reserve, about 9,070 ETH bought for about RMB166.4 million, and runs Goldshell Stake, which stakes coins for individual and institutional holders on four blockchains, Ethereum, Avalanche, Manta and Conflux, meaning it puts them to work on those networks to earn a yield. 222324252627282930

How it operates

Intchains describes itself as an altcoin company, altcoins being cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. It designs ASIC chips, each built for the one mining algorithm of a coin such as Litecoin, Dogecoin, Aleo, Kaspa or Alephium, and sells them built into its own mining machines under the Goldshell brand: 15 series and more than 30 models since 2024. It stopped selling bare chips by June 2024, so machines now bring in essentially all revenue. It also keeps Ethereum (ETH) as its main long-term reserve, about 9,070 ETH bought for about RMB166.4 million, and runs Goldshell Stake, which stakes coins for individual and institutional holders on four blockchains, Ethereum, Avalanche, Manta and Conflux, meaning it puts them to work on those networks to earn a yield. 222324252627282930

Its buyers are mainly distributors and individual miners, and a few of them carry the business: three customers took 35.1%, 27.0% and 22.4% of 2025 revenue, after 31.2%, 19.6% and 10.2% in 2024. Buyers choose on published performance figures, and many find Goldshell through third-party websites that rank mining machines. Substantially all customers paid in full before delivery, and payment in cryptocurrency is accepted. Each machine gets a launch price that then floats with the market price of the coin it mines, which the filing calls industry practice. 313233343536

Revenue is tagged by where customers are based. Mainland China brought in RMB173.5 million in 2025, 78.6% of the total and up 35.3%; Hong Kong fell 78.2% to RMB23.5 million and other countries 47.8% to RMB23.8 million. All revenue once came from customers in China. Buying the assets of the Goldshell brand in February 2024 and launching Goldshell machines abroad that March brought the first overseas buyers, mainly in the United States and Hong Kong; customers in the United States took about 7.8% of 2025 revenue. 373839404142

Intchains is fabless, meaning it designs its chips and hires others to make them. Its main wafer maker is an unnamed leading foundry it calls the Foundry Partner, used since 2018 with no long-term contract: it prepays in full to secure capacity and waits about four months for wafers. Wafers from the Foundry Partner made up 54.8% of everything it bought in 2025, after 68.4% in 2024. Outside firms package and test the chips, two contract manufacturers in the PRC assemble the machines, and finished machines ship straight from their plants. Some of its chips have been made in the United States since 2024 and pay tariffs when imported into China. 43444546474849

The listed company is a Cayman Islands holding company that works through subsidiaries in the PRC, with its head office in the Lin-Gang Special Area of Pudong, Shanghai. It files its annual report on Form 20-F with accounts prepared under US GAAP, the American accounting rules, and it reports in Renminbi, the Chinese yuan (RMB); the dollar amounts in the report are convenience translations at RMB6.9931 to the dollar. 5051525354

The specifics

Shanghai Intchains was founded in December 2017. To raise money abroad it reorganized in the second half of 2021 under a Cayman Islands holding company, which listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market in March 2023. In February 2024 it bought assets of the Goldshell Web3 hardware brand and moved from selling chips to selling whole machines; in December 2025 it bought a proof-of-stake technology platform for $1.3 million and launched Goldshell Stake. In January 2026 it agreed to sell its non-core chip research business for up to RMB18.0 million to Shanghai TopsFuture Microelectronics, a company controlled by its chairman and chief executive, Qiang Ding. 7551740265657

Its edge, as it tells it, is the speed of its chip design. Its in-house Xihe platform, built on its own mining and cryptographic algorithms, has produced six chip tape-outs, finished designs sent for manufacture, since 2024, and the company says every tape-out it has made has worked. It claims it can go from a coin's algorithm to chips in mass production in five to eight months, against ten to 14 for its peers. It holds 16 patents in the PRC, 38 registered chip layout designs, 21 software copyrights and 32 trademarks. It names no competitor, saying only that many well-known domestic and international players compete with it, some of them larger, and that new entrants include established chip companies. 585960616263

Chinese regulation shapes this business. China has treated cryptocurrency mining as a phased-out industry since a September 2021 circular and prohibits investment in it. The filing says such rules reach its customers in the PRC rather than the company itself; but a notice issued by ten PRC authorities in February 2026 newly and explicitly prohibits the sale of mining equipment within the PRC. Abroad, some of its products won exemptions from American tariffs on Chinese imports, while other exports to the United States still pay the higher tariffs. 646566676869

Three matters of control and audit stand out. All its ETH sits in Coinbase exchange accounts, where Coinbase, not the company, holds the private keys. In connection with its audits for 2023, 2024 and 2025, a material weakness, a serious gap in internal controls, was identified in how it safeguards the private keys to its crypto wallets, and its 2023 cash flow statement was revised to correct investments that had been misclassified as cash. It has also changed auditors twice: Mazars resigned in June 2024 when its partners joined Forvis, and the audit committee dismissed Forvis Mazars in January 2025 and appointed MaloneBailey. 7071727374

What drives growth, line by line

Revenue fell 21.6% in 2025 to RMB220.9 million, after rising 242.7% in 2024 from RMB82.2 million. The filing puts it down to the market's cycle: its Aleo machines lifted sales in the first half of 2025, then demand softened in the second half and pulled selling prices down. With larger provisions against inventory, gross margin fell from 53.7% to 7.2%, and the company swung to a RMB104.7 million operating loss from a RMB2.9 million operating profit. 75767778

Mining Products. RMB220.6 million, 99.9% of revenue, down 21.6% from RMB281.4 million. With bare chips no longer sold since 2024, the line is almost all mining machines. The company sold more units in 2025, 29,930 against 22,036, at a much lower average, about RMB7,284 a unit against RMB10,918. The AE BOX series, which mines Aleo and launched in the first quarter of 2025, sold the most, 11,568 units, and brought in nearly half of machine revenue. 3726798081

Other Revenue. RMB238.0 thousand, 0.1% of revenue, down 40.5%: maintenance of machines past their warranty and sales of products for Web3 applications. Its two Web3 products, Goldshell Pay, a payment service for merchants, and Goldshell Wallet, a wallet kept off the network for security, are still in trial, and the company does not expect them to add materially to profit soon. 378283

What comes next, in the company's own words: it expects to stake the bulk of its ETH treasury in 2026, on FalconX and on its own Goldshell Stake, to earn returns from idle assets, and Goldshell Stake plans to expand gradually into international markets. As of the report, 2,600 of its 9,070 ETH were staked, 1,000 on FalconX and 1,600 on Goldshell Stake, and outside holders had staked 1,359 ETH on Goldshell Stake. 84858687

The read's section on the people who run it is on the People tab.

What the desk infers Inferred

1. Inferred

   Intchains' margins are set by the coins its machines mine, not by its own costs: because it floats its prices with the coin market, a softer market reaches it at once as lower selling prices and inventory write-downs, which is how 2025 brought more units sold but less revenue and a thin gross margin.

   Because

   • It sets a launch price for each machine and adjusts it as the price of the coin it mines moves. 36
   • Units sold rose from 22,036 to 29,930 while the average per unit fell from about RMB10,918 to RMB7,284. 79
   • The filing ties the lower selling prices to softer demand in the second half of 2025, and adds higher inventory provisions. 77
   • Cost of revenue took impairment charges on excess inventory of certain mining machines, and gross margin fell from 53.7% to 7.2%. 8878
   Confidence 80 of 100Wrong if A year in which the average revenue per unit falls while gross margin rises, or in which selling prices hold up while demand for the coins its machines mine weakens.
2. Inferred

   The three buyers behind more than four fifths of 2025 revenue are most likely distributors based in mainland China that resell the machines, rather than miners running them there.

   Because

   • Its customers are mainly distributors and individual end users, and three of them took 35.1%, 27.0% and 22.4% of 2025 revenue. 31
   • Revenue is tagged by where customers are based, and customers based in mainland China brought in 78.6% of 2025 revenue. 3837
   • China lists cryptocurrency mining among eliminated industries and prohibits investment in it. 65
   Confidence 55 of 100Wrong if A filing that names any of the three largest 2025 customers as a miner operating the machines itself inside mainland China.
3. Inferred

   China's February 2026 notice turns what the filing describes as an indirect risk into a direct one: it bans the very sale of mining equipment within the PRC, where customers based in mainland China brought in most of 2025 revenue.

   Because

   • The filing says China's crypto rules do not directly affect the company, which does not engage in the listed activities, and could reach it only through its customers in the PRC. 66
   • The February 2026 notice newly and explicitly prohibits the sale of virtual currency mining equipment within the PRC. 6768
   • Mining products were 99.9% of 2025 revenue, and customers based in mainland China brought in 78.6% of it, up 35.3%. 3738
   Confidence 70 of 100Wrong if A filing showing that sales to customers based in mainland China are concluded and delivered outside the PRC, beyond the reach of the notice.