Overview

• Chinese authorities have discouraged local tech companies from purchasing Nvidia hardware and questioned Tencent over its chip buys, according to Reuters reporting cited by Gizmodo.
• Alibaba and Baidu have begun training models on their own accelerators, with three Alibaba employees telling The Information that its Zhenwu chip performs comparably to Nvidia’s H20.
• Tsinghua University adviser Wei Shaojun urged Asia to reduce reliance on U.S. GPUs and pursue chips designed specifically for large-model development, Bloomberg reported.
• Nvidia retains significant China exposure through large pre-restriction H20 orders, while reported licensing terms require remitting 15% of China chip revenue to the U.S. government.
• Nvidia has denied Chinese claims that new chips contain backdoors, and the company said on its latest earnings call that China results were weak and H20 shipments had not yet started.