Tencent Stockpiled Nvidia AI Chips for 'a Couple of Generations'

Tencent dismissed concerns that US export controls will constrain its AI development capabilities, at least for the foreseeable future. From a report: The Shenzhen-based company has stockpiled Nvidia's H800 artificial intelligence accelerators, enough to develop its proprietary Hunyuan AI model for at least another couple of generations, President Martin Lau said on an analyst call after earnings on Wednesday. 'Right now we actually have one of the largest inventories of AI chips in China among all the players,' Lau said. 'We were the first to put in orders for H800 and that allows us to have a pretty good inventory of H800 chips. So we have enough chips to continue our development.'

The Biden administration in October escalated export controls on AI semiconductors heading to China, depriving the Asian nation from access to a broad range of the world's best AI-training hardware. The purpose of the measures is to prevent China's military from obtaining the advanced technology, Washington argues, but they're also making business harder for the country's private sector. Elsewhere in China, AI industry veteran Kai-Fu Lee's unicorn startup 01.AI has been buying up the Nvidia chips it needs to develop its own foundation models, with Lee saying the company has enough semiconductors for the next 18 months.

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