According to industry insiders, Chinese AI companies have bought more than 1 million Nvidia gaming and workstation GPUs this year, targeting mainly chips that comply with the export controls set by the United States. These purchases are being used to power and train AI systems, reflecting a gap in the demand for semiconductors and the capacity of Chinese chipmakers to supply them.
The Nvidia chips that are being purchased (mainly RTX Pro 6000D, RTX Pro 5000 and RTX 5090) are weaker than leading Chinese products like Huawei’s Ascend 910C but they remain good enough for simpler jobs such as the prefilling stage of AI inference. The decision to purchase these semiconductor products is tied to a persisting struggle for China’s domestic chipmakers to keep up with the demand from its biggest technology companies, in spite of the country expanding its semiconductor production this year.
by Digital Watch Observatory – Chinese AI companies purchase over 1 million Nvidia gaming chips over a single year
