China wants to compete with Nvidia in the development of chips with artificial intelligence

China says the US ban on exports of NVIDIA’s flagship AI chips will create new opportunities for local tech companies. A group of independent experts measured the speed of task processing by artificial intelligence on the Chinese BR100 accelerator created by Biren. The experts confirmed the company’s claim that the chip outperforms one of the processors that was subject to sanctions restrictions on exports.

Biren, founded by former Alibaba and NVIDIA employees, has announced its intention to sell the BR100 chip to private data centers and cloud customers. The startup emphasized that the technology will not be used for military purposes. In addition to Biren, companies such as Cambricon, Alibaba Group PingTouGe, Iluvatar CoreX, Denglin Technology, and MetaX are engaged in alternative development of chips with artificial intelligence. According to the analytical firm PitchBook, these companies alone have attracted more than $ 2.5 billion in investments to develop new technologies in recent years.

As a reminder, the new package of US sanctions against China includes a ban on the supply of production accelerators based on GPUs, which means that the production of NVIDIA graphics cards and cryptocurrency mining are now under threat. It is worth noting that, in addition to the sanctions, NVIDIA’s sales are also affected by the fall in cryptocurrency prices. Miners who no longer receive the desired profit are disconnecting their graphics cards and selling them on retail platforms.