China's internet giants are rushing to acquire high-performance Nvidia chips vital for building generative artificial intelligence systems, making orders worth $5 billion, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Baidu, TikTok-owner ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba have made
orders worth $1 billion to acquire about 100,000 A800 processors from the US
chipmaker to be delivered this year, the FT reported, citing multiple people
familiar with the matter.
The Chinese groups had also purchased a further $4 billion worth
of graphics processing units to be delivered in 2024, according to the report.
An Nvidia spokesperson would not elaborate on the report but
said that "consumer internet companies and cloud providers invest billions
of dollars on data centre components every year, often placing orders many
months in advance."
The Biden administration last October issued a sweeping set
of rules designed to freeze China's semiconductor industry in place while the
US pours billions of dollars in subsidies into its chip industry.
Nvidia offers the A800 processor in China to meet export
control rules after US officials asked the company to stop exporting its two
top computing chips to the country for AI-related work.
The FT report comes as President Biden on Wednesday signed
an executive order that would narrowly prohibit certain US investments in
sensitive technology in China and require government notification of funding in
other tech sectors.
Nvidia's finance chief said in June that restrictions on
exports of AI chips to China "would result in a permanent loss of
opportunities for the US industry", though the company expected no
immediate material impact.
Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba did not immediately
respond to Reuters' requests for comment. © Reuters