Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC)
China's largest chip foundry and the linchpin of Beijing's semiconductor self-sufficiency drive: SMIC makes the DUV-only 7nm silicon behind Huawei's Kirin phones and Ascend AI chips, under three overlapping US sanctions regimes.
Background
SMIC was founded on April 3, 2000 in Shanghai (incorporated in the Cayman Islands) and grew into mainland China's largest pure-play foundry and, since Q1 2024, the world's third-largest by revenue (~6% share, having overtaken GlobalFoundries). It is run by co-CEOs Zhao Haijun and Liang Mong Song (both ex-TSMC/Samsung veterans). SMIC is dual-listed — HKEX 0981 (H-shares) and Shanghai's STAR Market 688981 (its 2020 IPO raised ~46.3bn yuan / ~$6.6B, among the largest ever) — after voluntarily delisting from the NYSE in May 2019 amid the trade war and Huawei fallout. Partially state-owned, it is a designated pillar of China's military-civil fusion and chip self-sufficiency campaign.
Its defining capability is being mainland China's only producer of 7nm-class logic, via its N+2 process using DUV multi-patterning rather than EUV lithography (which US and Dutch controls deny it — SMIC ordered an ASML EUV scanner that was never delivered). It reached 7nm in July 2022; the N+2 node powers Huawei's Kirin 9000S (Mate 60, 2023) and the Ascend 910C AI accelerator, and a newer N+3 variant (Kirin 9030, late 2025) that TechInsights rates 7nm/6nm-equivalent, approaching but short of true 5nm. Its stack officially spans 350nm-7nm but is dominated by mature 28nm-and-above nodes.