China has announced a series of subsidies to encourage the use of 100% domestically produced AI chips, such as those made by Huawei. This move comes in response to United States sanctions, which have made it challenging to access chips from companies like NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD.
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According to Reuters, municipal governments, including Beijing, are joining the initiative by offering tax incentives to companies like Alibaba and Baidu to purchase locally-made chips.
Companies that opt for domestically controlled GPU chips for their smart computing services will receive tax benefits based on a certain percentage of their investment. Market analysts predict that Huawei will be the primary beneficiary of this policy, given its ownership of the Ascend 910B AI chip, which has significantly improved performance.
Huawei is also planning to start producing HBM memory in-house, a move crucial for China’s AI industry. While the full impact of these measures on the revenues of companies like NVIDIA and Huawei remains uncertain, it’s worth noting that Chinese chips still lag behind those offered by their American counterparts. As a result, the local AI industry is bound to feel some effects.