The most important Chinese chip story of the year may not be a chip at all. It is the machine that carves the chip. AMEC (中微公司), the Shanghai-based maker of plasma etching tools, closed 2025 with record revenue and a reported foothold in a 5nm supply chain — evidence that China's equipment layer is maturing faster than the headline sanctions narrative suggests.
What AMEC actually does
Etching is one of the core front-end steps in making a chip: after a wafer is coated and patterned, an etcher removes material to sculpt transistors. AMEC builds two families — CCP high-energy etchers for dielectric layers and ICP low-energy etchers for silicon — and says they now cover more than 95% of over 300 etch application types. Its 60:1 ultra-high-aspect-ratio etcher is in volume production for memory makers.
The 2025 numbers
AMEC's own 2025 performance disclosure (later confirmed in its annual report) laid out record results:
- Revenue: about 12.385 billion yuan (≈ US$1.72 billion / HK$13.5 billion), up 36.62% year on year
- Net profit attributable: 2.08–2.18 billion yuan (≈ US$289–303 million / HK$2.26–2.37 billion), up 28.7%–34.9%
- Etching equipment revenue: 9.832 billion yuan (≈ US$1.37 billion / HK$10.7 billion), up 35.12%
- Thin-film equipment (LPCVD/ALD): 506 million yuan (≈ US$70 million / HK$551 million), up 224.23%
- R&D investment: about 3.74 billion yuan (≈ US$520 million / HK$4.07 billion), roughly 30% of revenue
By the end of 2025, AMEC said it had shipped more than 6,800 etching chambers globally, spanning processes from 65 nm down to 3 nm and more advanced nodes.
The 5nm signal
The headline beyond the financials: AMEC says its dielectric etchers have entered a 5nm manufacturing supply chain. Trade reporting, citing industry sources, said TSMC's Nanjing (南京) fab placed orders for AMEC's 5nm dielectric etching tools, with deliveries expected in the first quarter of 2026.
If accurate, that is a meaningful validation: a domestic plasma-etch supplier winning a slot at one of the world's most demanding fabs, not through policy preference alone but through tool qualification. AMEC's domestic etching market share is estimated around 15% by TrendForce, and Chinese etching vendors combined hold roughly 10% of the global market — small, but no longer negligible.
More than etching
AMEC is deliberately broadening beyond its core. Its thin-film business (LPCVD and ALD deposition tools) more than tripled in 2025, and it has moved into epi and edge-etch tools. Late in 2025 it announced a plan to take a controlling stake in a CMP (chemical mechanical polishing) equipment maker — a step toward covering more of the wafer-processing toolkit from one company.
The strategic logic is localization. Reporting indicates domestic equipment adoption inside China reached about 35% in 2025 against internal targets, with a 70% goal by 2027. Etching and deposition are exactly the categories where Chinese vendors are gaining the most ground. AMEC says its new-product development cycle has compressed from a traditional three-to-five years to under two, which is how a smaller vendor keeps pace with fabs that retool on eighteen-month cadences.
Why this matters globally
Equipment is the long pole in any chip ambitions, and it is where export controls bite hardest. A credible domestic etcher does two things: it shrinks the West's leverage over China's mature- and mid-node fabs, and it gives Chinese foundries a fallback supply chain if foreign tools are restricted.
That said, the ceiling is visible. Newer reporting notes that TSMC's most advanced fabs in Taiwan and the US have excluded Chinese equipment suppliers from their leading-edge (2nm-class) lines — a political and licensing decision, not purely a technical one. AMEC's 5nm win is real, but it sits at the edge of the advanced tier, not at its frontier.
For ordinary readers, the bigger point is that the China chip narrative has shifted from designing chips to owning the unglamorous machines that make them. A domestic etcher qualifying at 5nm is a more durable milestone than any single chip launch, because equipment capability compounds across every product a fab builds — and it is exactly the layer where export controls were meant to bite hardest.
Honest limitations
- All 2025 financials are from AMEC's disclosure and annual report; we did not audit them, though they are filed figures, not estimates.
- The TSMC Nanjing 5nm order is reported by industry media (ijiwei/TrendForce), not independently confirmed by TSMC in a primary statement we could verify.
- Domestic market-share percentages come from TrendForce and Chinese trade coverage; methodologies vary between sources.
- Equipment "entering a 5nm supply chain" describes qualification/orders, not necessarily high-volume leading-edge production.
- The 2nm exclusion at TSMC's frontier fabs is reported and reflects both politics and technology; the balance is hard to verify precisely.
What readers can do now
- Track AMEC's thin-film (LPCVD/ALD) growth as the cleaner signal of diversification beyond etching, not just total revenue.
- For supply-chain watchers, treat "domestic adoption ~35%, target 70% by 2027" as the macro backdrop for every Chinese equipment vendor, not AMEC alone.
- Watch whether the reported 5nm Nanjing orders convert to sustained volume — that, not the announcement, proves the qualification was earned.