How Does Anker Make Money?
- ZQdropshipping
- 3 hours ago
- 9 min read
In 2022, Anker shut down ten product teams. The company had grown to 4,000 employees and 27 product lines — robotic lawn mowers, 3D printers, and more. None of it worked. So it cut the teams, went back to chargers, and then reported ¥30.51 billion in revenue three years later.
That decision, and the decade of deliberate technology bets that made it possible, explains how Anker makes money today.
Anker earns revenue by selling its own branded consumer electronics worldwide under four brands: Anker (charging), eufy (smart home), Soundcore (audio), and Nebula (projectors). In 2025, about 96% of that revenue came from outside China. Amazon is its largest single sales channel. All figures below come from Anker's audited annual reports on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (ticker: 300866) and its 2026 Hong Kong listing prospectus.
How Anker started: a mother's savings and a gap nobody filled
Steven Yang left Google in 2011. He had been a senior search algorithm engineer at the company's US headquarters, with a master's degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He did not leave to follow a polished business plan. He left because his wife was already selling on Amazon, and watching her backend data, he noticed something.
Laptop battery replacements were everywhere on Amazon. The original brand charged a steep premium. Cheap third-party alternatives failed fast and collected one-star reviews. Nobody was sitting in the middle: reliable quality at a fair price. Yang returned from California to his hometown of Changsha, then moved to Shenzhen to build prototypes. His startup capital was his mother's life savings combined with less than $1 million in total funding.
He spent the first year building just that one product — a battery that worked, priced between the two extremes. The brand name, Anker, is the German word for anchor. Within that first year, monthly sales reached $1 million on Amazon.
The timing turned out to be wrong in one way and right in another. MacBook Air's sealed design was killing the laptop battery replacement market. But smartphones were exploding, and the charger space had the same structural problem: original brand overpriced, generic alternatives unreliable. Anker pivoted in 2012 to phone chargers and power banks. In early 2012, Yang brought in Zhao Dongping — Google's former head of China sales — who later became company president.
The technology engine: reviews, PowerIQ, and the GaN bet
Anker did not become Amazon's largest electronics seller by luck. It built a feedback machine that most competitors never replicated.
Every Amazon review, one-star to five-star, fed directly into the product development cycle. Yang has said: “Amazon reviews are the single most important input to our new product development process.” Return data and review text told engineers precisely what broke and what customers wanted. By 2021, Anker was doing $1.03 billion in Amazon sales annually — the first Amazon-native brand to cross that threshold.
The first proprietary technology to come out of this process was PowerIQ, Anker's intelligent charging protocol. Rather than licensing Qualcomm's Quick Charge system, Anker built its own chip: it reads the connected device and negotiates the correct voltage and current automatically. It worked universally across Apple, Android, and laptops, without a per-device license fee to a third party.
The bigger bet was Gallium Nitride.
Silicon has been the standard semiconductor in chargers for decades. Its problem is heat: silicon switches electricity at a limited frequency, wastes energy as heat, and needs bulk to manage that heat. GaN switches much faster at higher voltages, wastes less energy, and runs cooler. The same wattage fits in a fraction of the volume.
In 2018, Anker launched the world's first consumer-grade GaN charger. A 65W GaN unit fit roughly where a 30W silicon charger used to sit. The follow-on GaNPrime line pushed further — multiple ports at high wattage in a device smaller than a deck of cards. By owning the component technology, Anker could charge a premium: its MagGo series retails around $56–90 on Amazon while comparable generic brands sell for $6–11. That gap is where the margin lives.
Anker holds more than 471 patents across core technologies including GaN, fast-charging protocols, and battery management systems. R&D spending in 2025 reached ¥2.89 billion, equal to 9.48% of revenue. Of its 5,034 employees, 3,549 work in research roles — 56% of total headcount.
The path to the stock exchange
Anker’s revenue from its 2020 IPO prospectus tells a clean story:
2016: ¥2.51 billion
2017: ¥3.90 billion
2018: ¥5.23 billion
2019: ¥6.65 billion
Four consecutive years of 25–34% growth, almost entirely from overseas markets. When Anker filed for its Shenzhen ChiNext listing in 2020, the exchange was running a new registration-based IPO system — replacing the older approval process. Anker was among the first companies to list under the new rules.
The result: 4,731 times oversubscribed. The IPO priced at ¥66.32 per share and raised ¥2.72 billion on 24 August 2020.
Revenue climbed to ¥12.57 billion in 2021 and ¥14.25 billion in 2022. That is also when things got complicated.
The overexpansion, the privacy scandal, and the reset
Flush with IPO capital and a rising share price, Anker expanded into categories it had no established right to win. Headcount grew from 1,600 to 4,000. Product teams reached 27, covering robotics, 3D printing, and robotic lawn mowers. None gained commercial traction.
The eufy brand ran into a harder problem. In late 2022, a security researcher discovered that eufy cameras were uploading user thumbnail images to the cloud, despite the company marketing them as locally stored. A subsequent exploit showed that live camera streams could be accessed remotely without authentication using basic software tools. Anker initially denied the issues, then admitted them two months later. In a product category where privacy is the entire value proposition, the damage was real.
Annual revenue growth slowed to 13% in 2022 — the weakest year since the IPO. Yang cut ten product teams and returned focus to charging, audio, and energy storage.
How Anker makes money today: three segments, one big bet
The 2025 annual report shows three revenue segments:
Charging and energy storage: ¥15.40 billion (50.5% of revenue), up 21.6% from 2024
Smart innovation — eufy: ¥8.27 billion (27.1%), up 30.5%
Smart audio and video — Soundcore and Nebula: ¥6.83 billion (22.4%), up 20%
The fastest-moving piece is energy storage. Anker entered the European balcony solar market with its SOLIX Solarbank line after Germany opened balcony solar regulations around 2022. Traditional rooftop solar installation in Germany costs upward of €20,000 and takes months. The Solarbank priced at around €1,000 and plugs into a standard outlet. It solves a specific physics problem: solar panels generate power during the day, but households consume most electricity in the evening. The Solarbank stores the day’s generation and releases it at night, lifting self-consumption from roughly 40% to 90%. Energy storage revenue grew 184% in 2024.
On channels, Amazon has always dominated — but its share has been falling. At its peak in 2016, Amazon accounted for 80% of Anker’s total revenue. By 2025 that figure stood at 52.3%:
2016: 80% from Amazon
2021: 54%
2023: 57.1% (brief rebound as newer channels were still maturing)
2025: 52.3%
The company has expanded into its own direct websites (now about 10% of revenue), offline retail chains including Best Buy, Walmart, Currys, and MediaMarkt, and TikTok Shop, where it generated an estimated $10.5 million GMV in its first nine months on the platform.
One number moved the wrong way. Operating cash flow fell to ¥481 million in 2025, down 82% from ¥2.75 billion in 2024. The annual report links this to a deliberate inventory build-up ahead of expected tariff and supply chain disruptions. Net profit still rose to ¥2.55 billion, up 20%.
Can Anker hold its price premium?
Anker’s gross margin sits at roughly 43–45%. For a hardware company competing with Chinese manufacturers who have access to the same supply chain, that number requires explanation.
The pressure is real. UGREEN, founded in 2012 and now selling in over 180 countries, has closed the product gap significantly. In independent charger tests, UGREEN leads on price-to-performance and thermal efficiency. Its products typically retail at $6–11 — a fraction of Anker’s MagGo tier. Baseus competes on design and aggressive pricing for budget-conscious buyers. Both brands are growing fast on Amazon and eating into Anker’s category dominance.
Anker’s defense rests on three things.
First, brand trust that took years to build. Its products carry an average Amazon rating of 4.7 stars and a return rate of about 1.5%. Those numbers reflect the review-driven quality loop running since 2012 and are difficult for a newer brand to replicate quickly.
Second, proprietary technology. Owning GaN chip integration, PowerIQ, and its own battery management systems means Anker’s higher-end products are not simple commodity items. Competitors can build a similar-looking charger; matching 471 patents of accumulated engineering is a longer road.
Third, certification and retail presence. Anker leads the global Qi2-certified charger market with 15 certified models. It has shelf space in Best Buy, Apple Stores, Walmart, and European electronics chains. A first-time buyer picking up a charger at a physical retailer is far more likely to encounter Anker than UGREEN.
The risk is real, though. As GaN becomes standard across the industry, the technology gap narrows. The clearest signal of that pressure is the brand strategy itself: in 2025 and 2026, Anker began consolidating its sub-brands. Nebula merged into Soundcore in late 2025. In 2026, Anker Japan announced it would fold Soundcore and eufy back under the main Anker name. In China, the Soundcore name was replaced with “Anker Sound & Video.” The multi-brand structure that separated product categories for a decade is quietly being reversed — a sign that the premium for running four distinct brand identities may no longer justify the cost.
The second listing: A+H, and what it funds
On 2 July 2026 — five days before this article was published — Anker began trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under the ticker 00668.HK. The offering ran from 23 to 26 June 2026, with a maximum fundraise of HK$4.63 billion (about $595 million), underwritten by CICC, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan.
The dual listing completes an “A+H” capital structure — Shenzhen for domestic investors, Hong Kong for international institutions. Twenty percent of proceeds (approximately HK$904 million) is allocated to product innovation and R&D. The remainder supports global operations and supply chain expansion.
The timing is deliberate. The Hong Kong listing gives Anker access to US-dollar capital at a moment when its North American business faces tariff uncertainty and it needs to simultaneously fund the energy storage and eufy growth waves.
Frequently asked questions
Why does Anker barely sell in China?
The strategy is explicit: Anker only enters a category where it can build a product 3–5 times better than what already exists. China’s charging and smart home segments are saturated with well-funded domestic brands competing on razor-thin margins. Since that margin of superiority is almost impossible to establish there, Anker stays out — which is why mainland China contributes only about 4% of total revenue despite the company being headquartered there.
Anker's gross margin holds at 43–45%. What supports that beyond technology?
Three reinforcing factors. First, years of Amazon reviews have produced a 4.7-star average rating and a return rate of roughly 1.5% — trust that new entrants cannot buy. Second, Anker has locked up physical shelf space in Best Buy, Apple Stores, Walmart, Currys, and MediaMarkt; a first-time buyer in a retail store is far more likely to reach for Anker than UGREEN. Third, 471 patents cover GaN integration, intelligent power distribution, and battery management at the component level — competitors can copy the industrial design but not the underlying hardware architecture.
What exactly happened in 2022, and why were there two separate crises?
The first was strategic: flush with IPO capital, Anker expanded from 1,600 to 4,000 employees across 27 product lines including robotics and 3D printing. None reached commercial scale. The second was a brand crisis: security researchers found that eufy cameras were uploading user thumbnail images to the cloud despite being marketed as locally stored, and that live streams could be accessed remotely without authentication. Anker initially denied both findings before admitting them two months later. Revenue growth fell to 13% that year — the weakest since the IPO. Yang then cut ten product teams and refocused on charging, audio, and energy storage.
Net profit rose 20% in 2025 but operating cash flow dropped 82%. Is that a warning sign?
No. The divergence reflects a deliberate inventory decision, not operational trouble. Anker’s management built up large stock ahead of anticipated tariff increases and supply chain disruptions — money that left the bank but sits on the balance sheet as inventory. At the same time, Anker extended payment terms to overseas distributors, which inflated receivables. Both actions reduce cash flow on paper without touching profitability. If the inventory sells through at planned prices, that cash returns in a later period.
Sources
1. Anker Innovations, 2025 Annual Report, Shenzhen Stock Exchange (300866), April 2026.
2. Anker Innovations, 2024 Annual Report, Shenzhen Stock Exchange (300866), April 2025.
3. Anker Innovations, 2020 IPO Prospectus, Shenzhen Stock Exchange (300866), August 2020. Revenue figures 2016–2019; IPO price, proceeds, and oversubscription.
4. Anker Innovations, Hong Kong IPO Prospectus, HKEX (00668.HK), June 2026. Fundraise amount, use of proceeds, underwriters.
5. Anker Innovations, official site, anker.com. GaN charger technology; patent count.
6. Marketplace Pulse, Anker’s Sales Hit $1B on Amazon, 2021.
7. KR-Asia, After a bold pivot, Anker finds its anchor in charging products once again, 2024.
8. 36Kr (English), From $100 Million to $3 Billion, 2025. On SOLIX Solarbank and storage pivot.
9. South China Morning Post, Anker, the Chinese startup behind Amazon’s most popular power banks.
10. Chargerlab, Anker, Belkin, and UGREEN Lead Qi2-Certified All-in-One Charger Market, 2024.
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