Canaan shipped the world's first bitcoin mining machines built on custom chips, under the name Avalon, in 2013. Those chips did one thing: the math that secures the bitcoin network and pays out new coins. Mining had moved from home computers to warehouses full of special machines, and most of them came from China. When Canaan went public in New York in November 2019, bitcoin had crashed from its 2017 peak and the larger rival Bitmain had shelved its own IPO plans.

One Chip, One Job

Nangeng Zhang founded Canaan in 2013 and led it as chief executive. The company designs its chips and pays other firms to make them. Its bet was that bitcoin mining would reward whoever built the most efficient hardware, since miners compete on the cost of electricity per coin. Canaan sold its AvalonMiner machines to mining farms around the world. Its sales rose and fell with the price of bitcoin.

A Penny Below

Canaan priced its American depositary shares at $9 on November 20, 2019, the low end of its range, and raised $90 million. The stock jumped almost 40 percent in early trading on Nasdaq the next day, then closed at $8.99. Later Canaan began mining bitcoin itself and added a quiet miner for homes. In January 2026 Nasdaq warned that its shares had traded below $1. Canaan moved to the Nasdaq Capital Market in July 2026 and still trades under CAN.

Cover: Coal Miner, Lewis Wickes Hine. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a miner (bitcoin mining).