It is rare for a company that started as an outdoor equipment manufacturer to see its chip business revenue grow by over 200% in a single quarter. Toread's Q1 2026 report shows chip business revenue of 179 million yuan, up 206.92% year-on-year, accounting for 36.09% of total revenue. Overall revenue reached 496 million yuan, up 39.41%, with net profit attributable to shareholders rising 14.44%.
Breaking the Bandwidth Bottleneck
Deploying large language models on edge devices such as phones, cars, and robots faces a key constraint: data transfer bandwidth between chips and memory. Shanghai Tongtu's strategic agreement with Horizon Robotics targets this pain point. Tongtu's full-stack compression system covers three layers: input data (compressed to 1/5), intermediate state data (50% further compression on top of Google's results), and model parameters (30% compression without retraining). This approach aligns with Google's TurboQuant algorithm, confirming that 'compression liberates computing power' is an industry certainty.
Industrial Deployment: Automotive-Grade Chips
Horizon Robotics, a leading automotive AI chip provider, reported 2025 revenue of 3.758 billion yuan, up 57.7% YoY. In 2026, it launched the 'Starry 6P' cockpit-driving integrated chip and an intelligent operating system. Tongtu's compression technology will integrate with Horizon's computing platform to optimize inference bandwidth and memory usage on automotive-grade chips. This moves the technology from lab research to industrial-scale application, directly impacting hardware costs and power consumption for smart terminal products.
Performance Confirms Dual-Business Synergy
Since establishing its 'outdoor + chip' dual-main-business strategy in 2021, Toread has acquired five chip-related companies, building a full-chain chip product matrix covering perception, interaction, and display. The chip business now drives growth faster than the outdoor segment (8.02% growth). During the 618 shopping festival, Toread's smart exoskeleton Crest C3 began pre-sales, selling over 100 units in a single day on Tmall. The device weighs only 1.8 kg with a thrust-to-weight ratio of 10:1.
Market Outlook: Edge AI Blue Ocean
Toread Vice President Wang Hongjian predicts China's edge AI market will grow from 600 billion yuan in 2026 to 2.1 trillion yuan by 2030. Tongtu's compression technology can be applied to eight scenarios including personal devices, smart spaces, intelligent vehicles, industrial internet, embodied robots, and AR/VR wearables. For the textile industry, this technological breakthrough offers reference points: smart wearables and intelligent outdoor equipment are becoming new growth areas, and chip-level compression efficiency directly determines product battery life, size, and cost.