BEIJING, August 11 (TMTPost)— Chinese internet giants are racing to hoard high-performance chips, the key firepower in a heated artificial intelligence (AI) race.

Credit：Visual China

Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and ByteDance have ordered a total worth of US$5 billion of Nvidia AI chips, out of which about 100, 000 A800 processors worth of about US$1 billion to be delivered this year, and the rest to be delivered next year, the Financial Times reported, citing people close to Nvidia. The report also quoted sources that ByteDance had already had made an order of US$700 million for 70,000 A800 chips to be shipped next year even TikTok parent had a buildup of least 10,000 Nvidia GPUs to support its AI ambition. 

This is the latest sign that leading internet players in China has been buying up Nvidia chips. Chinese media outlet LatePost reported in June that all the leading Chinese internet companies that have cloud computing business had made their large orders to Nvidia. In particular, ByteDance was reported to have ordered Nvidia GPUs valued more than US$1 billion this year, and orders from ByteDance alone could equal to all Nvidia commercial GPU orders in the whole Chinese market in 2022.

Nvidia is the semiconductor designer that dominates the market for AI chips, which empower AI systems including the large language model behind ChatGPT. The behemoth said in March it has modified some of flagship products including A100 and H100 for exports to China, including an alternative A800 chip, as the U.S. regulators last year banned it from selling its most advanced chips to China.

But even A800, the weakened version of Nivida’s cutting-edge A100 processor, could be categorized as the prohibited product when the U.S. government rolled out new restrictions on China. 

The Wall Street Journal reported late June that the Biden administration is considering new curbs on the exports of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, including stopping the chip shipments made by U.S. companies to customers in China and other countries concerned without first obtaining a license. The U.S. Commerce Department could reportedly announce the move as soon as early July, affecting all the American chipmakers such as Nvidia, AMD and Micron Technology. And the restrictions the department is reportedly mulling would even ban sales of A800 without a license.

The report, though not was confirmed by any American officials, soon fueled fears of Chinese companies that had already ramped up their efforts for AI development. Nvidia AI chips cost much higher in China following the report, highlighting local companies’ fear of the possible ban.

The price of A800 is changing day by day, and buyers who order in large quantities can secure it at more than RMB100,000 apiece, while those order less have to pay at least RMB110,000 per chip, a Nvidia dealership told Chinese digital newspaper The Paper in the first half of July. “Given the news about chip export ban, everyone is reluctant to sell (the chip), and the price has been raised by 20% to 30% in the past week or so,” the dealer added.

A Tencent Tech News report in late July revealed the selling price became much higher. The domestic distributors was reported to sell Nvidia's China-tailored A800 and H800 for RMB250,000 or RMB300,000, or even for as high as RMB500,000 each. Even major internet companies had to rely on their previous business relationship with Nvidia to stockpile chips, according to the report. There is by all means a difference between negotiating with Nvidia China and directly talking to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in the United States, the report cited an industry insider, signaling that Nvidia’s major customers are more likely to secure their bulk orders.

Nvidia itself has kept warning against U.S. export controls on chips and other advanced technology products. The Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress warned restrictions on AI chip exports to China would lead to “a permanent loss of opportunities for the U.S. industry right after the Wall Street Journal report about looming further chip export curb. "Over the long term, restrictions prohibiting the sale of our datacenter graphic processing units to China, if implemented, would result in a permanent loss of opportunities for the U.S. industry to compete and lead in one of the world’s largest markets and impact on our future business and financial results," said Kress, though seeing no immediate material impact. 

Jensen Huang warned in May about U.S.’s dangerous attempts to further curb China’s development. Huang said he sees the potential for “enormous damage” to U.S. companies if the chip war with China escalates during an interview with the Financial Times in May. “If we are deprived of the Chinese market, we don’t have a contingency for that,” he said. “There is no other China, there is only one China.” Huang warned in June not to underrate China’s ability to catch up in chips as China will cultivate its own chip firms in response with tensions with U.S.

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