ChinaCache.The pioneer, absorbed.
China’s first CDN, founded in 1998, holder of the country’s first nationwide CDN permit, once NASDAQ-listed and trusted by Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. Today ChinaCache no longer operates as a standalone provider: after its 2019 delisting, its international operations were acquired by EdgeNext in February 2023 and integrated into that platform. We keep this page because people still search for it, and because where its customers went next matters.
What happened, in four acts.
A quarter-century arc from national pioneer to absorbed asset, compressed.
Founded in Beijing in 1998 as China’s first CDN, ChinaCache secured the country’s first nationwide CDN operating permit in 2000 and built the early delivery layer for China’s portal era, serving names like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, with partnerships reaching Microsoft and Adobe.
A NASDAQ listing under CCIH made it, for a time, the international face of Chinese content delivery, and the on-ramp Western multinationals used for mainland entry, ICP filings and in-country hosting guidance.
Competitive pressure from Wangsu-scale domestic rivals and cloud giants eroded the position; the NASDAQ delisting came in 2019, and technology investment visibly slowed while the market accelerated.
EdgeNext acquired ChinaCache’s international operations in February 2023 and integrated the services, customers and operational experience into its own emerging-markets platform. As of 2025–26, ChinaCache is regarded as defunct as a standalone entity.
The company that invented the category, locally.
Every provider on this site that sells “licensed mainland-China delivery” is walking a road ChinaCache paved: the first permit, the first multinational onboarding playbooks, the first proof that in-country delivery could be sold to Western enterprises at all. Its ICP-guidance workflows and bilingual operations lived on into EdgeNext, which is precisely why that successor punches above its founding date.
Your international services now live under EdgeNext, which manages the acquired assets and offers equivalent delivery and security products; transition support and archived documentation route through them.
The living options for licensed in-country delivery are profiled on this site, EdgeNext as the direct successor, CDNetworks as the Wangsu-backed heavyweight, both benchmarked in our advisory work.
A 25-year-old pioneer with blue-chip clients still exited the market. Provider longevity is an input to CDN strategy, not an assumption, which is why we architect estates so any single vendor, however storied, can be replaced without drama.
The living alternatives.
Three destinations cover essentially every reason someone lands on this page.
ChinaCache questions,
answered straight.
Is ChinaCache still operating?
Not as a standalone provider. Following the 2019 NASDAQ delisting, EdgeNext acquired its international operations in February 2023 and integrated them; public trackers list ChinaCache as defunct as an independent entity.
What happened to existing ChinaCache services?
International customers and services transferred to EdgeNext, which manages the acquired assets and offers equivalent CDN and security products; transition questions and archived documentation route through EdgeNext support.
Why did China’s first CDN fail?
The short version: scale economics. Wangsu-class domestic rivals and the cloud giants’ CDN arms commoditized delivery inside China faster than a mid-size independent could reinvest, and the pioneer’s technology advantage eroded through the 2010s until the position was untenable.
What replaced it for licensed mainland-China delivery?
For most buyers, two names: EdgeNext, the direct successor to the international business, and CDNetworks, the Wangsu-owned heavyweight. Our profiles cover both, and our benchmarks usually test them head-to-head; see EdgeNext and CDNetworks.
What’s the takeaway for CDN strategy?
Vendor mortality is real, even for pioneers with blue-chip clients. Architect so any provider can be swapped: portable configurations, documented origins, and contracts without multi-year lock-ins, the same principles behind our multi-CDN guidance.
ChinaCache and EdgeNext are trademarks of their respective owners. CDN World is an independent advisory and is not affiliated with any provider named on this page. Historical and status information reflects public reporting as of July 2026.