How US Sanctions Accidentally Forged 'China's NVIDIA' and a $23 Billion Fortune

​In one of the most profound ironies of the modern U.S.-China tech war, American sanctions designed to cripple China's artificial intelligence industry have instead acted as a kingmaker, propelling a 40-year-old Chinese computer prodigy into the stratosphere of the world's wealthiest people.

That man is Chen Tianshi, the co-founder of AI chip designer Cambricon Technologies. Once on the brink of irrelevance after his largest customer, Huawei, dropped his firm, Chen has seen his personal fortune rocket to an estimated $22.5 billion. His company's stock has surged over 765% in 24 months, and his wealth has more than doubled since the beginning of this year alone.

This meteoric rise is a direct, albeit unintended, consequence of Washington's economic warfare. By cutting China off from elite NVIDIA and AMD chips, the U.S. created a protected, multi-billion-dollar domestic market—a vacuum that Chen's state-aligned company was perfectly positioned to fill. His success story is now a case study in how political pressure can forge a new class of national champions, insulated from free-market forces and aligned with state goals.

The Man, The Prodigy, The Billionaire

Chen Tianshi is not a typical tech billionaire. His rise is a testament to China's state-backed academic pipeline. Born in 1985 in Nanchang, Chen's intellect was identified early. He and his older brother, Chen Yunji, were fast-tracked into a "program for gifted students" at the elite University of Science and Technology of China, where he earned a PhD in computer science.

From there, he joined the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the heart of the nation's state-funded scientific ambitions. It was here, alongside his brother, that he first gained international attention for academic papers on their "DianNao" AI accelerator.

The Birth of Cambricon

In 2016, the Cambricon project was spun off from the academy and founded as a company, with the CAS as an early financial backer. This was not a "garage startup" in the Silicon Valley sense; it was a state-nurtured enterprise from day one, designed to pursue China's national ambitions in AI.

The company's first major breakthrough came in 2017 when Huawei used Cambricon's AI processor technology to power the photography and gaming features in its flagship Mate 10 smartphone. This partnership seemed to set Cambricon on a path to becoming a key supplier to China's biggest tech giant.

Then, disaster struck. In 2019, Huawei—itself now a target of U.S. sanctions—abruptly cut off almost all business, opting to develop its own AI chips in-house. This move vaporized over 95% of Cambricon's revenue, pushing the young company to the brink of failure.

How Sanctions Became a Savior

Chen Tianshi was a long way from a $23 billion fortune in 2019. But then he caught a break from the most unexpected source: the U.S. government.

The NVIDIA Vacuum

Washington's escalating campaign to "choke" China's access to advanced technology came to a head with sweeping export bans. These controls effectively barred U.S. companies like NVIDIA and AMD from selling their high-performance AI chips to any Chinese entity.

This created a massive, immediate supply gap. Chinese tech giants like Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent, which had built their AI ambitions on a steady diet of NVIDIA GPUs, were suddenly cut off. Their multi-billion dollar AI infrastructure plans were in jeopardy.

A "Halo of State Sponsorship"

With the market leader (NVIDIA) now banned by an external force, Beijing stepped in with its own powerful mandates. In August, the Chinese government urged local companies to avoid using NVIDIA's H20 processors—a less-powerful chip the U.S. giant had designed to comply with sanctions—and to "buy local."

This was the moment Chen Tianshi's fortunes were forged. Cambricon, along with a newly resurgent Huawei, was immediately elevated from a struggling startup to a "national champion."

Protected by government policy and showered with investor zeal, Cambricon became the default, patriotic alternative to banned U.S. hardware. The company, which listed on Shanghai's Sci-Tech Innovation Board in 2020, saw its stock ignite. Chen's 28% stake in the AI accelerator producer ballooned in value, making him, by some measures, the third-richest person in the world at or under the age of 40, behind only heirs to the Walmart and Red Bull fortunes.

The "China's NVIDIA" Conundrum

Chen's rise highlights a new industrial order where political favor, not pure market competition, can define the winners. But it also raises a critical question: Is Cambricon a genuine tech powerhouse, or is it a "Potemkin village" propped up by a protected market?

The Challenge of a Moat

Skeptics are quick to point out that Cambricon's valuation may be dangerously inflated. "It's too early to say if Cambricon or Huawei... will become China's Nvidia," noted Sunny Cheung, a researcher at the Jamestown Foundation.

The reasoning is simple: NVIDIA's true power isn't just its hardware; it's CUDA, its proprietary software ecosystem. This software layer is what AI researchers and developers have used for over a decade. It is extraordinarily difficult to replicate. Without a robust software "moat" of its own, Cambricon is just a hardware provider, and its long-term competitiveness remains in question.

Even Cambricon has tried to cool the investor frenzy. The company issued a warning in an August filing, reminding the market that it also labors under U.S. sanctions (it was added to the "entity list" in 2022) and stressing the immense difficulty of ascending the technology ladder.

From Red Ink to Black

Despite the questions, Cambricon's financials have undeniably turned a corner. After being "consistently in the red" since its 2020 IPO, the company began to book its first-ever quarterly profits in late 2024.

The "urgent need for countries to have access to hardware infrastructure," as one U.S. AI CEO noted, is driving this growth. When the only options are a sanctioned-but-available domestic chip or no chip at all, the choice for Chinese companies is clear.

Future Outlook: The Sanction-Proof Dragon

The meteoric rise of Chen Tianshi and Cambricon Technologies serves as a powerful, and perhaps worrying, parable for U.S. policymakers. The sanctions, intended to slow China's AI ambitions, have instead acted as an industrial incubator, using the full force of the U.S. government to eliminate foreign competition for a state-backed startup.

The U.S. has inadvertently forced China to build its own technological sovereignty. It has subsidized the creation of a "domestic NVIDIA" that is, by its very nature, fully insulated from any future American sanctions.

While Chen Tianshi is still a long way from NVIDIA founder Jensen Huang's net worth, his $23 billion fortune is a testament to this new reality. He is the face of a new class of "state-aligned tech elites" being minted by the geopolitical tech war. The U.S. wanted to stop China from buying its AI chips; it may have just taught China how to build—and get rich from—its own.