chips

what is needed are cheaper chips

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Let’s face it, I’ve been using high-end phones for more than a decade, but I tend to test mid-range phones quite frequently and it’s been clear to me for a long time that you can buy a smartphone for 300 euros and have decent performance for standard use. Obviously, not for a gamer or a demanding user, but for the average user. Hence the mobile phones that I most recommend They cost between 300 and 500 euros. This upward range has two explanations: the first, that in addition to performance, it is common for “a good camera” to appear on many people’s wish lists. And here, the Google Pixel A is the king. The second is a market where the price increase is inevitable because everything goes up, but especially components like memory or storagewhich can lead to the tragic news of recover 4GB of RAM. Qualcomm is the manufacturer that equips most of the premium Android phones on the market and according to rumorsits next flagship will arrive twice: a Pro version for the ultra-premium range and another for the pure high-end. The difference between the two would be the type of RAM supported and the GPU configuration, similar to what Apple does with its iPhones. Surely their benchmarks are printable, but More than its advantages, what worries me is the price. The cost of current Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 They are around 280 dollars and for the following ones everything indicates that They will overcome the barrier of 300 dollars. This means that for many manufacturers, just purchasing the processor will account for a third of the RRP of their devices. Google shows that another path is possible Meanwhile, Google is going its own way within the ecosystem: Your Tensors are never at the top of performance and not only do they not seem to care, but they continue to offer seven years of updates even in their A versions. For more ridicule, their new Google Pixel 10A even repeats processor. And nothing happens: any mid-range from the last three years will allow you to successfully use messaging, social networks or browse the internet. It is true that there are specific use scenarios where continuing to add more and better hardware can be differential, such as ray tracing, moving games with a certain cadence, or AI. But on the one hand it is something niche and on the other, current models can still give a fight. And I’m not just talking about the high-end. Google Product Manager, Toni Urban, makes quite a statement of intent: We had to make difficult engineering decisions to maintain that price of 549 euros, which we have maintained for four generations. The chipset is part of that consideration. We knew we could still deliver the best of Google’s AI and the best camera experience with the chip we had; We didn’t feel like we were sacrificing quality, and we still continued to incorporate important improvements. If a medium range of a couple of years can continue to carry out normal and current tasks in a solvent manner, with a veteran high-end, even better. It is rare to find someone who renews a high-end one for another citing performance reasons. The bottleneck is another: it could be the camera, thermal management or the battery and its performance, because performance is a problem solved years ago on mobile phones. Google’s decision not only seems right from a price point of view, but also from a balance point of view: performance tests take a backseat when factors such as temperature or battery life act as limitations. Not obsessing over performance allows manufacturers to differentiate themselves in other areas or simply maintain their prices. And that is no small thing. In Xataka | The best mobile phones (2026), we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | Best mobile phones in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and seven recommended models

While the world fights for the most advanced chips, there is a company making gold with the ones that go inside your washing machine

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If you have walked through an industrial estate, you have surely come across the typical warehouse with the sign “Spare Parts and Bearings (Insert name)”. And it’s easy for you, at that moment, to wonder what the hell a bearing is and how the rest of the businesses are closing, except for ‘Rodamientos Paco’. Well, in the world of technology there is also a ‘Paco Bearings’. Is called Texas Instruments and, in full era of sophisticated chips, artificial intelligence and quantum computingis breaking it with something very specific. Boring chips. In short. Companies are in the middle of the results presentation period. In this round, the managers inform their shareholders about the direction of the company, while allowing us to learn about data on upcoming devices or business plans. Texas Instruments usually goes unnoticed in these more ‘techie’ times, but they are finishing up a fiscal year with very positive numbers. The fourth quarter they closed with 4,420 million and anticipate increasing to 4,680 million in the first quarter. In the last three months, its share value has increased by 18%. Its shares are among the highest among companies in the same sector and, as we said before, the curious thing is that it is doing all this almost silently. Live outside the hype. You can constantly read information about cutting-edge chips on Xataka. It is true that the current nature of components is marked by the current RAM memory crisis either of SSDsbut the snapdragonthe Apple Silicon, the latest from NVIDIA or AMD It is what usually marks the conversation. They are the most sophisticated and interesting chips, but a coffee maker does not need a chip like that. That’s where Texas Instruments comes into play. Because calling their chips “boring” is not an exaggeration. They are outside the AI ​​hype, the data centers and the most exciting features because its market is different: sensors, connectivity, controllers. Where are Texas Instruments chips? In routers, smart refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, as secondary chips in televisions, in remote controls, in calculators or in smart smoke detectors. But they not only make chips, but also another series of integrated circuits for wireless communications, signal processing in all types of devices and even sensors that detect tire pressure, engine temperatures or the air conditioning system. Texas Instruments chips and sensors are in… everything. Even in weapons. An example of a tiny sophisticated chip in the headphone stick… with only 16 KB of RAM. Because you don’t need more Huge investment. And the company is not sitting idly by with the huge amount of money it is making with its ubiquity strategy. a few days ago, Bloomberg reported on the agreement that Texas Instruments had reached to buy Silicon Labs. Also American, also with ‘boring’ chips that They are inside ‘things’ of all kinds. The operation is not closed, but the smell of it caused Silicon Labs shares to increase 51% to more than $206. The curious thing? That Texas Instruments is willing to pay more: up to $231 per share to investors. The operation has not been closed, but there is talk of a purchase of 7.5 billion dollars, well above the 4.5 billion that Silicon Labs is “worth.” Great year ≠ perfect year. All of this is… outrageous, but it indicates something very specific: they are spending a lot of money to reinforce a huge, stable market that goes unnoticed in a time when everything revolves around artificial intelligence and sophisticated technology. The purchase of Silicon Labs, paying such a high premium per share, shows that they know very well what they are getting into and the value of a market in which they are a key player. But one thing must also be noted: although revenues rose, annual profits did not increase at the same rate. He total invoiced increased by 13%, but as they have also invested more, this increase in costs reduced the profit margin, which “barely” increased by 4.2%, with some quarters being worse than others (in Q4 they fell by 3.5%). They haven’t had a perfect fiscal year, but there is one thing that is undeniable: they are still the kings of their niche. If we can describe being everywhere as a “niche”. In Xataka | While half the world looks for an alternative to Taiwan, Jensen Huang is very clear about the harsh reality: there is no

China has given the green light to buy NVIDIA chips. The problem for your companies is that you will closely monitor each operation

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NVIDIA has hundreds of thousands of H200 chips trapped in limbo. It is one of the company’s most powerful chips and the standard of the companies that are training AI. It is preferred for train the modelsand also the weapon with which The United States sought to leave China out of the game. After movements by the two countries, The US finally approved (25% commission through) that NVIDIA could sell the H200 to Chinese companies. China has taken some time, but finally it seems that it will accept the offer reluctantly and with an ace up its sleeve: DeepSeek. The mess. The H200 issue is a soap opera. In the context of the trade and technology warthe United States played one of the best cards they had: preventing one of their most powerful products from reaching Chinese hands. They also hindered European companies like ASML from selling their most advanced machinery for making semiconductors to companies like Huawei or SMIC. China responded, of course. He attacked with rare earth -that control almost exclusively– and has been showing little by little that they can not only create advanced semiconductors on your own (and pushing old technology to the limit), but they are alive and well in the battle for artificial intelligence. Furthermore, they have developed a robotics industry and other aerospace practically out of nowhere, making a vacuum to Western chips, and that has caught the United States on the wrong foot. China makes a move. Seeing that China was advancing and the US was not getting a cent, they moved tab: They opened the door for NVIDIA to sell its H200s to certain Chinese customers. For each sale, the US took 25%, but it seems that it was something that the Chinese Big-Tech wanted to take on because they need, at least currently, that NVIDIA technology. And the GPU company itself increased production expecting two million orders above normal. The problem is that everything moved very quickly. without China, really, having said anything. Because here it is not just a question of whether the United States lets it sell, but whether China wants its companies to buy. In a tense calm that left requests halted and thousands of H200 in limbo, China has finally made a move. According to Reuters, and as we told a few days agothere are companies that will be able to place orders for the H200. There is a “but”. It is not carte blanche for anyone to place an order. According to WSJ, Chinese authorities have indicated that each purchase must be for a use considered “necessary.” That includes advanced research or development in AI. Because two factors come into play here: On the one hand, it seems that there are Chinese companies that are pressuring the Government to let them access the technology. NVIDIA was allowed to sell the H20 to Chinese customers, but if these customers can now buy the H200 – six times more capable – they want to take advantage of it. But China does not want everyone to throw themselves into the arms of NVIDIA because, precisely, they have been building their own semiconductor industry for five years with SMIC and Huawei in the lead. China’s goal is to stop depending on the US, and if everyone starts buying US chips like crazy, they will not advance on the technological roadmap that the country marked a long time ago. That is to say, it seems that Chinese regulators are going to evaluate which companies can or cannot buy the H200 depending on the use they want to give it. It has been reported that, for example, ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent will be able to import 400,000 H200 chips. But there is a twist to all this. deepseek. China’s quintessential artificial intelligence model is one that has turned both NVIDIA and the United States upside down. The question was how it was possible that, without access to the latest technology, DeepSeek could optimize its AI so much. On the one hand, ingenuity to circumvent the CUDA standard. On the other hand, there are those who are clear that DeepSeek has been trained with NVIDIA cards… smuggled. Accusations of smuggling are nothing new in this commercial and technological war, but precisely, and according to Reutersthe company that joins NVIDIA’s massive H200 order along with ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent is… DeepSeek. Officially, and without restrictions, they will be able to access the H200. “We have given China the argument to launch its own industry and, at the same time, we are giving them access to ours again” – Samuel Bresnick Whiplash. I really liked this concept that Wired uses to define American policy in this regard. They are the ones who started the conflict and their position has been pivoting about tariffsbut with more or less lax measures depending on the moment. It seems clear that, now, they are at a point where they have had to think “if China is going to somehow reach the technology, at least we sell it and earn something along the way.” Samuel Bresnick is a researcher at the Georgetown Center for Security and Technology and comments in Wired that the worst thing you can do is “come and go,” noting that “we have given China the argument to launch its own industry and, at the same time, we once again give them access to ours.” Get your batteries. And meanwhile, there’s Jensen Huang. The CEO of NVIDIA has taken a mass bath in recent days in both China and Taiwan, where he has met with some of the companies that move the semiconductor sector. NVIDIA sat at the same table, TSMCFoxconn or Asus, and Huang came out, half joking, half seriouswith one request: you need wafers and RAM. Regarding the purchase of the H200, China is walking on eggshells, and it makes perfect sense. It is at a point where it does not want to be left behind, and to do so it needs its … Read more

The panic of technology companies about running out of chips has broken the RAM market. Manufacturers have said enough

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The RAM market is completely broken. In November of last year we talked about a 300% increasewas the result of the perfect storm caused by AI and data centers. Faced with brutal shortages, large companies are trying to get hold of as much memory as possible, which further destabilizes the market. Now manufacturers are taking matters into their own hands. No hoarders, thank you. In an extensive report published by Nikkei Asiatalk about the big three DRAM manufacturers (Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix) implementing stricter rules for their customers in order to prevent them from hoarding memory. The measures are aimed at ensuring that demand is real, that is, that the chips are not going to end up collecting dust in a warehouse “just in case.” Manufacturers are asking for details about who the chips are for, the quantities and what they will be used for. OpenAI’s dirty deal. We go back to October 1, 2025. OpenAI signed an agreement with Samsung and SK Hynix to a potential demand for 900,000 DRAM wafers per month. The figure is equivalent to 40% of all world production, absurd, but what is striking is the “potential.” As they point out multiple users on Xare securing a critical product for data centers that have not yet been built, with money they do not have. Some analysts called this agreement “The dirty DRAM deal”whose hidden objective seemed to point to a rather dirty move: to create a moat by preventing its competitors from accessing critical technology. Open orders. The AI ​​race is not going to stop because chips rise in price and big technology companies have done what they had to do: everything possible to get chips. At the end of last year, Reuters He said that some companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta had even approached Micron with open orders, that is, they were willing to accept all the memory they could supply, without a price cap. A full-fledged preventive hoarding. Compulsive shopping. AI companies are not the only ones that have tried to secure their chips, PC manufacturers such as Asus, MSI, Dell or HP also began to buy RAM compulsively at the end of 2025 for accumulate inventory before what was coming. Manufacturers are aware of overorders and that is why they are now demanding data on the end customer. The winners. While everyone is fighting to get their chips, Samsung is getting rich. It is not only that has tripled its profitsFurthermore, it is the technological more has appreciated in 2025ahead of Alphabet and TSMC. For its part, SK Hynix has doubled its profitsmainly due to the boom in demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), of which it is a key supplier. In Xataka | There is a lack of RAM memories and Micron is going to spend 1.8 billion dollars to produce more. but not for you Image | Unsplashedited

The US consumed 60% of all the chips it produced to go to the Moon

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In the context of the Cold War, developing an ambitious space program was more than just technological exploration and innovation: for the United States it meant demonstrating its hegemony over the USSR. And he took it very seriously: officially spent almost 26 billion dollars between 1960 and 1973 (the equivalent about $257 billion today). Before and after Apollo. Simply put, the Apollo program was colossal and it shows in both its achievements and its legacy. Because beyond the milestone of humanity’s arrival on the moon, the list of inventions he brought under the arm was impressive because either they are still used today or they laid the foundations for today’s technology. For example, although NASA did not invent freeze-dried foods, they did. gave them a twist to maintain its flavor and texture while reducing its weight. Also brought the refrigerated suits that are used today for people with multiple sclerosis and PBI as a star fireproof materialsomething they arrived at after the death of three astronauts in the Apollo 1 fire and which is today used in firefighter suits. Or the airless tires. If we focus on computing, the fly by wire It was a paradigm shift to embrace digital, the standard in today’s aviation. NASA changed the computer industry. And if food had to be lightened, stylizing the on-board computers was something providential. Plus, do it without compromising power. So they built the Apollo guidance computer with a promising but still little consolidated technology: integrated circuits with the first silicon chips. Yes, those that we have even found in the soup for decades. The Apollo program he did not invent the microchipbut it did make it possible have a huge supply. Much of the chip production went to NASA. In fact, in 1963 the Apollo project had already achieved take over 60% of US supply of chips. Bridging the distance, like what happens today with AI. The US army supported the proposal, which integrated chips into its missiles Minuteman II. The production contract fell into the hands of Texas Instrumentsforcing the industry to move from “artisanal” chip manufacturing to mass production. Towards total democratization. The combination between NASA and the Pentagon was the total catalyst for standardization and cost reduction. In fact, in 1962 a single microchip could cost at least 120 dollars. By ’68, prices had plummeted less than two dollars. This enormous need, together with the importance of their application in strategic sectors, caused both NASA and the army to demand absolute reliability of the chips from the companies behind them, such as Fairchild or Texas Instruments. This is, put them to tests like extreme temperatures or G-force. It was Moore’s law at its finest. NASA moved the industry forward a decade. The push from NASA and the Pentagon reduced the cost of microchips by 98% in less than 10 years. The result? That they went from cutting-edge technology to landing on more basic and modest electronics such as calculators. According to John Tylkoengineer and technological historian and current professor at MIT, if NASA had not existed we would still have integrated circuits and Moore’s Law would have been fulfilled… much later: “But perhaps we would not have had it in 1965. Maybe we would have had it a decade later.” In Xataka | Four astronauts are going to undertake an unprecedented journey to the Moon. They have no intention of stepping on it In Xataka | We have been deceived by the distances of the Solar System: the closest neighbor to Neptune is Mercury Cover | Flickr

that China approves the purchase of its H200 chips

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China has given the green light for the first time to the purchase of NVIDIA’s H200 chips for AI, which has allowed several of the country’s main technology companies to import these semiconductors. We had been waiting for a few weeks for Beijing to comment on the matter, since NVIDIA was multiplying its chip production to be prepared for this moment. Although there are some rules that companies must follow. The decision. According to account Reuters, ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have received authorization to acquire more than 400,000 H200 chips in total, an operation valued at approximately $10 billion. More Chinese companies are expected to receive the go-ahead in the coming weeks, although specific conditions have not yet been detailed. Visiting. The authorization comes during NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to China this week. Huang has toured Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen on his traditional annual trip ahead of the Lunar New Year celebrations. However, according to account the Wall Street Journal, has not met with senior Chinese officials. Why is it important. The approval breaks a stalemate that has lasted for months. In April, the United States initially banned the sale of H20 chips to China, a less powerful version that NVIDIA had designed specifically for the Chinese market. Although Washington turned back with the H20, Beijing then told companies not to buy themalleging cybersecurity issues that NVIDIA denied. After a meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping In South Korea last October, the United States authorized the export of the H200, a significantly more powerful chip. Now, China is doing its part by approving the import of these chips into the country. The Beijing dilemma. The issue is that China was preparing for a world completely independent of American technology, so after approval it dances in a delicate balance. On the one hand, Beijing wants its best AI developers to be able to build new models and applications quickly, something that NVIDIA chips would greatly facilitate. On the other hand, it has been cultivating a self-sufficient semiconductor industry for years. Although according to account WSJ, the country has encountered resistance especially from private sector companies accustomed to using NVIDIA software products and tools. The conditions of the agreement. According to Reutersthe approvals include restrictions that are still being defined. But what is known is that Chinese companies that want to buy American chips have had to submit documents to authorities explaining how they plan to use them. The country’s authorities have indicated that any purchase must be for uses considered necessary, such as advanced research and development in AI, according to inform WSJ. Some companies have also included plans to purchase chips made in China in their agreements, as authorities require companies to use locally produced semiconductors for some AI training tasks and most inference-related workloads. btechnological right. The H200 represents a significant qualitative leap, exceeding the performance of the H20 by approximately six times. Although Chinese companies like Huawei now they have products which rival the performance of the H20, they are still far behind the H200. And in order not to be left behind in the AI ​​race, large Chinese technology companies have lined up to order more than two million H200 chips, far exceeding NVIDIA’s available inventory. Impact. NVIDIA had seen its share of AI chips in the Chinese market fall from 95% to virtually zero as it awaited actions from both governments, according to declared Huang in October. Meanwhile, Chinese companies have tried fill that void using a large number of lower power chips to increase processing capacity. And now what. According to account WSJ, Huang is soon scheduled to travel to Taiwan, also part of his annual routine, where he is expected to speak with suppliers about manufacturing more H200 chips to feed demand in China. After the October trade truce between the US and China, it seems that the waters have calmed down, at least on the surface. Cover image | Arthur Wang and NVIDIA In Xataka | Meta, Google and TikTok have condemned an entire generation to “doomscrolling.” And now they are going to be judged for it

some need chips and others need power

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Under such a reflex (and common, in my case) act of taking out the cell phone and opening Gemini or have a browser tab open with ChatGPT There is a huge infrastructure behind it. I am a free user of both models, but AI is a long-distance race that is worth a lot of money. Hence, companies with a solid ecosystem such as Google or Meta can better endure this initial phase of expansion and that OpenAI already has it on its roadmap. put advertising. I have mentioned two products that I use daily and that are competitors, but on a global stage they are on the same team: the United States. On the other side of the ring, China. Because the other power that has entered the race is China (Europe is still finding its feet). In fact, his government has outlined a detailed plan to dominate it by 2027. While in China the push for artificial intelligence is led by the government, in the United States it is the private sector. Two different ways of understanding the business that constitute the tip of the iceberg of two routes that, despite having a common goal, increasingly diverge. Different investment approaches. If we talk about investment, the difference is abysmal: in the United States, a venture capital investment of 175 billion dollars was made, according to data from China International Capital Corp. If we look for a figure from a reference entity within the US, signatures like PitchBook up the ante up to 222 billion (brutal: of every 3 dollars invested in startups in the US, 2 go directly to AI) and Crunchbase estimates it at 168 billion dollars. In any case, light years ahead of China, which is around 6 billion dollars, according to the Stanford AI Index Report. Focusing on business, the range narrows: American big tech companies invested six times more than their Chinese counterparts, according to with data from Pitchbook and FactSet. And if we combine public and private, too: in China the sum amounts to 165,000 million dollars in recent years, well behind the 563,000 million coming from companies and the US government. An obvious thing: state and private capital have different expectations in terms of profitability, investment horizons and target sectors. A concrete example: China has just launched its first LLM aimed at agriculturea strategic sector for the state that is surely not among the first interests of the US private sector. And this is key to understanding their divergent growth trajectories. Where does each one invest?. In China, money is flowing into underlying technologies, with advanced semiconductors leading the way. as explained by CICC. In the United States, on the contrary, the absolute priority is the construction of data centers, a slow and full of so many obstacles that until they consider the spaceand energy infrastructure able to meet the demand. And it makes sense, as each one’s case is particular: China is facing a technology blockade that has made it have to dig in its heels and step on the accelerator to achieve self-sufficiency and thus address the scarcity of resources derived from its restricted access to latest generation chips. In the case of the United States, the combination of aging energy infrastructure and strong growth in electricity demand has reactivated its search for new energy sources, with significant geopolitical effects, and has returned prominence to industries such as nuclear. What if it’s a bubble? In the midst of the growth phase of the sector and with countries putting all their efforts into action, it is inevitable to think that sooner or later the bubble could burst. For the Nobel Prize winner in Economics Michael Spence, we are facing a “rational bubblethus justifying the investments: “The cost of coming in third place in the competition is much greater than the losses derived from overinvestment or inefficiency” he explained in the Taihu World Cultural forum. At last month’s FII Priority Asia forum in Tokyo, SoftBank Group founder and CEO Masayoshi Son attempted to allay fears explaining that “if AI were to generate 10% of global gross domestic product in the long term, it would more than offset trillions of dollars in AI spending.” In any case, there are surveys that give food for thought. In Xataka | The race for AI has placed China in an unthinkable scenario: forcing the United States to leave its comfort zone In Xataka | Europe is discovering right now that the US is not the partner it thought. And that is a problem in AI. Cover | Gemini

The US offered NVIDIA chips to China. China has responded with a “no, thank you”, according to the Financial Times

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China has turned the technological development in state policy. The country is shaking up its economy through robot development (some already working in stores or in disasters), artificial intelligence and, above all, chips. Giants like Huawei and companies like SMIC are developing chips with one goal in mind: eliminate dependence on the United States. However, some of these companies need to access powerful and reliable chips immediately, and NVIDIA had presented itself as the best option. It seems that everything has been a mirage. Full speed ahead. The current technology war between the United States and China means that Western companies cannot do deals with Chinese ones. This includes the sale of advanced chip making machinesbut also that NVIDIA, for example, can’t even sell its advanced chips like the previous generation. A few weeks ago, however, the United States relaxed its policies, which opened the door so that NVIDIA could sell the famous ones again H200 to certain Chinese customers. The US was going to take a 25% tax on each sale and it was a win-win: Chinese customers had access to renowned chips and NVIDIA managed to take part of the Chinese pie (a pie of 50,000 million dollars). At least until local companies develop their alternatives. Last week we already said that NVIDIA had increased production waiting for two million orders. But there is a problem: a sudden stop. With Customs we have encountered. At that time, China had not commented and the person most interested in the operation, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, commented that if the orders were arriving it is because someone had authorized them. That was taken as a silent confirmation from China, but now there is news. Although the country still has not made an official statement, since Financial Times They point out that NVIDIA was surprised to find that customs had stopped the orders. According to sources consulted by the media, customs officials in China recently summoned logistics companies from Shenzhenone of the neural points of technological innovation of the country, to warn of something: they could not submit shipping requests for the H200 chips. National chips please. That pressure has led the company to pause production. All there is is uncertainty right now due to a chain of events that show that NVIDIA was crazy about selling. After putting pressure on both governments, Huang managed to get the US to give approval for the sale in China, but China did not comment, something that the US company took as an approval. Chinese policy for a few months has been very clear: favor and promote local industry with one goal: ‘Delete America’. China seeks technological sovereignty through giants like the aforementioned Nvidia, but also with others like Moore ThreadsBiren, MetaX or Enflame. black market. However, the fact that orders cannot be placed to buy NVIDIA chips does not mean that NVIDIA chips are being stopped: As already pointed out Reuters a few months ago, that ban and the veto on the sale of sophisticated chips has promoted a black market of American chips, especially the B200 and B300 from NVIDIA, more powerful than the H200 that the US Administration authorized. There is talk of a market of more than 1,000 million dollars, and although NVIDIA had hopes of re-entering the country through official channels, it seems that the Government is going to continue encouraging its technology companies to bet on ‘Made in China’ solutions. Images | Chinese Communist PartyNVIDIA + Photoshop In Xataka | The race for AI has placed China in an unthinkable scenario: forcing the United States to leave its comfort zone

Chinese startups have been relying on NVIDIA chips to train their models for years. That is already changing

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The name of the Chinese startup Zhipu AI (Z.ai) may not sound familiar to you, but perhaps GLM, its AI model, does a little more than its latest version, GLM-4.7already competes with Claude Sonnet 4.5 or GPT-5.1. The real surprise of this “Chinese AI tiger” is the launch of GLM-Image…and not so much for what he does, but for how he has managed to do it. what has happened. GLM-Image is a multimodal generative AI model that focuses on image generation. The idea, of course, is to compete with options like Nano Bananafrom Google. That’s interesting, but even more striking is the fact that the model has not been trained with conventional chips. Trained with Chinese chips. According to those responsible for Z.ai, this model is the first developed in China that has been fully trained with “local” chips. Specifically, it has been trained with Huawei’s Ascend chips thanks to the use of servers Huawei Ascend Atlas 800T A2 and a framework called MindSpore. Thus, traditional NVIDIA AI chips, which are usually the usual choice for AI model developers in Chinese startups, have not been used. Turning point? This milestone demonstrates the real feasibility of training high-performance generative AI models on a platform developed entirely in China. We are not dealing with something minor: it is validation that it is possible to continue innovating in this area despite the restrictions imposed by the US. In fact, Zhipu AI — included last year on the US blacklist — has intensified its collaboration with other local manufacturers, such as the promising firm Cambricon that has risen from the ashes thanks to tariffs. Threat to NVIDIA. The news comes at a unique time, because NVIDIA has not stopped pressuring the US government to once again allow it to sell its advanced AI chips to Chinese companies. He has obtained that permission—which It won’t be free—, but now the one that might not be interested is China, which he hasn’t said anything at all. That chips from companies like Huawei are a valid alternative for training quality AI models can change many things in this area. Zhipu goes like a shot. The Chinese startup has also just gone public, and since it has done so its shares they have shot up more than 80%. Investors see the company no longer as a rival to Google or OpenAI, but as a banner. One that shows that it is possible to compete without depending on the US and its companies. Huawei, great beneficiary. If the trend continues, Huawei can become the Chinese NVIDIA, and the company prepares an increase in production of its AI chips. It is not the only one: Cambricon plans triple your production by 2026, which seems to make it clear that the Chinese industrial machinery is moving quickly to neutralize the impact of US vetoes. Challenges…Despite everything, Zhipu already has warned that the price war in the AI ​​sector will become international. If Chinese companies end up controlling the entire chain (or rather, their chain), they could offer AI services at much lower costs than their Western competitors, who must pay NVIDIA’s margins and Big Tech’s cloud infrastructure. …and unknowns. This technological achievement raises other questions. One of the most important is how powerful and capable Huawei chips are compared to NVIDIA’s in these processes: is training much slower? Is it more expensive in time and resources? The efficiency of the MindSpore framework compared to Pytorch or TensorFlow is another of the key components of these developments. In Xataka | Faced with the US strategy, China has a plan to revive its technology industry: that AI belongs to everyone

NVIDIA fears that China will hinder the sale of H200 chips, so it is asking for advance payment without exchanges or returns

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The fact that NVIDIA can market H200 chips in China It’s going around a lot these days and it’s no wonder. And after the Government’s uncertainty about whether it ends up allowing them in the country or not, the company has imposed unusually strict payment conditions for customers who want to buy these chips in China. According to information According to Reuters, the company now requires full payment up front, with no cancellation, refund or configuration changes options once the order is placed. Why it matters. NVIDIA has billions at stake in China, the world’s largest semiconductor market. Chinese technology companies have placed orders for more than 2 million H200 chips valued at about $27,000 each, well above the company’s available inventory of 700,000 units, according to account the middle. But the regulatory situation is a powder keg: the United States has just authorized the sale with a 25% tariff, while China has not yet confirmed whether it will allow imports. Regulation. The Biden administration had banned the export of chips advanced AI to China, but Donald Trump reversed that policy last month allowing H200 sales with the aforementioned 25% tariff that goes directly to the US government. However, China has not yet given the official approval. According to BloombergBeijing plans to approve some imports this quarter, but only for select commercial uses. The military, sensitive government agencies, critical infrastructure and state-owned companies would be left out for security reasons. Protection. The payment terms transfer all of NVIDIA’s financial risk to its customers, who must commit capital without certainty that Beijing will approve the imports or that they will be able to deploy the technology as planned. According to account The average, although NVIDIA has always required advance payments from Chinese customers, deposits were sometimes allowed in lieu of full payment. Now the company is especially strict due to the lack of regulatory clarity. A recent scar. NVIDIA has reason to be cautious. Last year it had to write down $5.5 billion in inventory after the Trump administration abruptly banned the sale of the H20 chip to Chinathe most powerful product that it could then offer there. Although the United States has reversed that decision, China has since banned H20 shipments. This experience explains why the company prefers to ensure collection before any unforeseen regulatory event. Overwhelming demand. Chinese tech giants like ByteDance and Alibaba see the H200 as a significant improvement. This chip, currently NVIDIA’s second most powerful, offers approximately six times the performance of the now locked H20. According to Bloombergboth Alibaba and ByteDance have privately communicated to NVIDIA their interest in ordering more than 200,000 units each. Delivery times. NVIDIA plans to fill initial orders with existing stock, with the first batch of H200 chips expected to arrive before the Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February, according to account Reuters. The company has also approached TSMC to increase H200 production to meet demand in China, with additional manufacturing planned for the second quarter of 2026. The local competition. Meanwhile, NVIDIA’s Chinese rivals are gaining ground. And just as inform Bloomberg, local manufacturers such as Huawei have developed AI processors, including the Ascend 910Calthough its performance still lags behind the H200 for large-scale training of advanced models. On the other hand, Cambricon Technologies It also plans to significantly increase its production of AI chips in 2026, thus expanding its market share and filling the gap left by NVIDIA. What’s coming now. In the coming days it will be known if China makes a final decision on H200 imports. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, declared at CES this week that customer demand for H200 chips is “quite high” and that the company has “activated its supply chain” to increase production. Huang also noted that he doesn’t expect the Chinese government to make a formal statement about approval, but rather that “if purchase orders come in, it’s because they can make them.” Cover image | NVIDIA and Arthur Wang In Xataka | There is a new player in the race for the autonomous car and it is one that should worry Tesla a lot: NVIDIA

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