chips

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

Exynos had been the ugly duckling of chips for years. BMW thinks the opposite.

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When choosing a high-end Samsung, the dilemma between betting on the Exynos version or the Qualcomm version has always been clear. In fact, until just a generation ago Samsung reserved its chips Exynos for the “non-Ultra” models, and provided its flagship with Snapdragon Elite on duty. Its chip division has been in crisis for almost a yearbut the latest leaks point to the comeback being close. Meanwhile, the company has a plan to revitalize the income of this business area: bet on the automotive industry. bmw. According to Korean sourcesBMW has chosen the Samsung Exynos Auto V720 to give life to a very important vehicle for the German brand: the next iX3. It will be the first electric car to use this platform. One of the current wars in the automotive sector is precisely to lead in infotainment systems, and there the processor plays a fundamental role. The Exynos Auto V720. This processor will be manufactured in a five nanometer process, and its announcement will be imminent according to the source. It is not the first time that BMW has opted for the Korean company, since flagship vehicles such as those of the Series 7 of the company have been betting on platforms such as the Exynos Auto V920 since 2023. Why is it important. Samsung’s Samsung LSI (Large Scale Integration) division is responsible for the design and development of chips and solutions for semiconductors. It is not only responsible for manufacturing Exynos processors, but also ISOCELL image sensors or the 5G modems themselves. Without a detailed shock plan, the data on the table tells us of estimated losses of 1 trillion won in 2024, a result that was partly due to the inability to integrate the processor Exynos 2500 in the Galaxy S25 series. Beyond smartphones, a crucial division for Samsung, fully entering the automotive world is an important step to clean up its accounts. In fact, Samsung’s move goes beyond simply supplying the Exynos Auto. Recently, Harman (Samsung subsidiary) agreed to purchase ZF Friedrichshafen’s ADAS unit to reinforce its presence in advanced assistance systems (cameras, radars, critical computing, etc.). Interior of the BMW 7 Series The software war. The current war in the automotive world is not about the engine, It’s in the software and the screens. It’s getting to that pointthat manufacturers such as Volkswagen have come to declare that “they are not phones, they are cars”, as an argument to reintroduce the haptic buttons that their customers missed so much. The European Union itself has had to take action on the matter, and the new Euro NCAP will be valued very positively the return of physical buttons. Despite this, screens are here to stay. Image | bmw

AI doesn’t just live on chips, it also requires massive energy, so Google has bought an energy company

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The AI needs a lot of energy and technology companies are already planning how to power their huge data centers. On the table there are such creative ideas as take them to space either submerge them in the sea to reduce its consumption. Google has opted for a more immediate solution: it has purchased an electricity company for data centers. The agreement. Google has purchased Intersect Powera company dedicated to developing energy infrastructure, including renewable energy sources, for data centers. Google has paid $4.75 billion for the San Francisco-based company, in addition to assuming its debt. According to Sundar Pichai: “Intersect will help us expand our capacity, operate with greater agility in the construction of new power generation facilities in line with the new load of data centers, and reinvent energy solutions to drive innovation and American leadership” Why it is important. The agreements of AI companies are usually focused on computing capacity, not energy. This agreement underscores the importance of energy in AI infrastructure, putting it on the same level as the very chips it powers. Data centers are being developed at a brutal pace and energy is presenting itself as a bottleneck. Satya Nadella already said it: there is no power for so many chips. It’s Google ensuring enough “food” for its chips. Yontersec. Google’s relationship with Intersect began just a year ago, when big tech acquired a minority stake in the company. Under this collaboration, several projects have come to light in their data centers. Both these projects and all Intersect personnel are part of the agreement. What the agreement does not include are other company assets, mainly located in Texas and California, worth 15 billion. These will continue to operate under the Intersect brand. Energy. In 2023, data centers already accounted for 4% of the energy consumption of the entire United States, and at the rate at which they are being built, the figure will continue to increase (there is talk of 12% by 2028). The problem is that US electrical infrastructure cannot support that pace and is having consequences for consumers through price increases in electricity. Google assures that with this agreement it will be able to guarantee “an abundant, reliable and affordable energy supply that allows the construction of data center infrastructures without passing on costs to network customers.” Image | Wikipedia, Intersect In Xataka | Talking about artificial intelligence is talking about energy, and the fashionable term is ‘bragawatts’

Samsung opens the era of 2nm chips with the Exynos 2600. Chances are we won’t notice much

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Samsung has announced officially the Exynos 2600 SoC. This smartphone chip is especially notable for one particular feature: it is the first to be manufactured with 2 nm photolithography. The question, of course, is whether that will change things much. Why is it important. Node jumps in photolithographic processes are especially striking because they usually lead to significant improvements in performance and efficiency. By reducing the scale it is possible to fit more transistors in the same space, which in essence ends up giving us “more for the same.” The Samsung Exynos 2600 goes precisely in that direction. The data. Samsung’s new System-on-a-Chip (SoC) boasts above all of that new 2nm GAA (Gate-All-Around) manufacturing process, and is composed of the following elements: CPU: ten cores in total. The configuration features one 3.8 GHz C1-Ultra core, three 3.25 GHz C1-Pro cores, and six 2.75 GHz C1-Pro cores. GPU: Samsung Xclipse 960 NPU: 32K MAC What can we expect. According to Samsung, this new CPU increases performance by 39% compared to the Exynos 2500. The Xclipse 960 GPU manages to double the computing capacity of its predecessor and 50% more performance in ray-tracing. And finally, the NPU allows 113% more performance than its predecessor, which will allow you to enjoy AI functions in a theoretically notable way. 320 MP sensors. Another of the differentiating elements of this SoC is the support for sensors of up to 320 MP, in addition to offering zero latency for captures of up to 108 MP. Or what is the same: you take snapshots thanks to that processing capacity. It is also compatible with 8K recording at 30 fps and 4K at 120 fps with HDR. Less throttling. One of the most important novelties of these chips is Heath Path Block technology (HPB). This system improves thermal conductivity using new materials, which reduces thermal resistance and helps the chip maintain high performance for longer. It will therefore be more difficult for us to notice drops in chip performance due to potential overheating, for example in gaming sessions with the mobile phone that integrates this SoC. If that promise is fulfilled, we would be facing a potential solution to a problem that has traditionally been criticized in Exynos chips. Will we notice anything? The truth is that current SoCs are already true computing beasts in all sections and usually give so much room for maneuver that it is difficult to notice differences between them in our daily lives. That perception is misleading, because these hardware advances allow us to take advantage of that performance and efficiency “without realizing it.” Increasingly better photos captured and processed instantly, absolute fluidity in the interface even with high resolutions and refresh rates, or of course gaming in increasingly demanding games are scenarios in which these chips do their best. remains to be seen if Google finally goes ahead with its “PC mode”an area in which having powerful chips like this can offer a user experience much closer to the usual laptop/PC. Competition for Qualcomm. Theoretically, the Samsung chip will be able to compete head to head with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Some previous leaks That’s what they pointed out, but without a doubt we could be facing a great option for a market that will certainly benefit from that competition. Prepared for the Galaxy S26. Samsung is expected to use the new Exynos 2600 in its Galaxy S26 series, although it is not clear at the moment whether that decision will be global and will depend on the region. A global commitment would allow, for example, to integrate this chip on the Galaxy S26 and use Qualcomm chips only in the S26 Ultra, but everything remains to be confirmed. Of course, that type of strategy would be the definitive litmus test for Samsung Foundry, which in recent years has clearly been one step behind in performance and efficiency compared to its competitors. In Xataka | The Samsung Galaxy S26 will be much more than a phone for Samsung: the future of Exynos depends on it

with smuggled NVIDIA chips, according to The Information

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The Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek would have been training his next model with thousands of NVIDIA Blackwell chipsthe most advanced on the market and whose export to China is expressly prohibited by the United States. So The Information states itciting six sources close to the company, who claim that the chips would have arrived in the country through smuggling. ANDl alleged smuggling scheme. According to the media, the chips would have been acquired legally through data centers in countries where their sale is allowed. Once installed and inspected by NVIDIA or its authorized distributors such as Dell or Super Micro Computer, the servers would have been disassembled and the components would have been shipped to China in separate pieces, passing customs under false declarations. This method would allow no trace of the end user to be left. The response of NVIDIA. The company has flatly denied these accusations in a statement: “We have not seen any evidence or received notices of ‘ghost data centers’ built to deceive us and our OEM partners, which are then dismantled, smuggled and rebuilt elsewhere.” NVIDIA adds that, although this type of smuggling “seems implausible,” it investigates any information it receives about it. Why Blackwell chips are so valuable to DeepSeek. NVIDIA’s Blackwell processors began shipping in the final quarter of 2024, with companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI being the first to receive them. These chips include specialized hardware to accelerate sparse computing (Sparse Computing), executing this type of calculations up to twice as fast as traditional methods. According to The Information, DeepSeek would have been using a technique called “sparse attention” that activates only certain parts of the model to respond to requests instead of the entire model, which significantly reduces inference costs. Blackwells would be especially useful for this approach, although their application in larger models is proving more complicated than anticipated. Geopolitical context. US President Donald Trump came to boast to Chinese leader Xi Jinping that Blackwell chips are “10 years ahead of any other chip” and that he would not allow China access to them. However, this week Trump authorized the sale of H200 chips from NVIDIA to China, a generation before the Blackwells, although Beijing is still considering whether to allow its acquisition. Of course, this measure could reduce demand for smuggled Blackwell chips in the Asian country. lThe difficulties of enforcing restrictions. Most NVIDIA chips are manufactured in Taiwan and sold through a complex network of distributors around the world. Jacob Feldgoise, analyst at the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies at Georgetown University account to the media that “the burden of proof to enforce and prosecute chip smuggling cases is quite high. Clear and convincing evidence is needed.” DeepSeek remains silent. The Chinese startup has not responded to the allegations. Previously, DeepSeek had trained its models with older NVIDIA chips: 10,000 A100 units stored by its parent company, hedge fund High-Flyer Capital Management, before US export restrictions took effect in 2022. The company’s research documents from last year indicated that they also had used hopper chipsthe generation immediately before Blackwell. DeepSeek faces several sticks from Washington: in April, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party published a report calling the startup “a profound threat” to American national security, accusing it of illegally using export-controlled NVIDIA chips. Qregulatory repression. NVIDIA confirmed this week that it has developed a verification technology location through software that could indicate in which country its chips operate, although it has not yet been launched. This tool would use the computing capabilities of your GPUs to monitor the performance and location of the processors. The company has clarified that this is read-only software that does not allow NVIDIA to remotely control the chips or disable them. “There is no off switch,” the company said. Cover image | DeepSeek, Xataka with Mockuuups Studio and NVIDIA In Xataka | If anyone thought that Europe had no role in the race for AI, Mistral has something to tell them

Jensen Huang managed to convince Trump to sell his H200 chips in China. Now China doesn’t want to buy them

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When something gets into Jensen Huang’s head, he goes after it and often succeeds. This is what happened in July of this year when managed to convince Trump to let him sell his H20 chip in China. History has just repeated itself and has managed to the president lifts the veto on H200 chips (although keeping a part). The problem is China, which does not see it very clearly. what has happened. China is preparing restrictions aimed at limiting access to NVIDIA’s H200 chips, according to Financial Times. If these restrictions end up being implemented, it will mean that the chips will not be available to any company that wants to buy them; They will first go through a pre-approval process, which includes explaining why chips from domestic companies do not meet their needs. In addition, there is another fact that adds up: for the first time, China has put national chips from companies like Huawei and Cambricon in its official procurement list. This list is a kind of purchasing guide for public institutions and large state groups that move billions a year in contracts. Why is it important. It is further proof that the Chinese government’s priority is not to depend on American technology for the development of its AI. Their bet is to favor the use of national chips even though they are not technologically at the level of NVIDIA chips. It’s not the same. China has already responded with distrust when NVIDIA obtained permission to sell H20 chips months ago and it seems that now they want to follow the same path, but there is a big difference: the H20 chips were the most basic, the H200 GPUs are much more advanced and represent a greater technological advantage, especially in more demanding tasks such as training large language models. What Chinese companies say. According to South China Morning PostAI companies in China such as ByteDance, Alibaba or Tencent continue to prefer to use H200s because they are much more powerful than the national alternatives offered by Huawei or Cambricon. Additionally, much of these companies’ code is based on NVIDIA’s Hopper microarchitecture, allowing them to use the chips without having to rewrite the code. On the other hand, developers who do not need maximum performance are wary of using American chips given the instability of the situation. The energy. NVIDIA’s CEO has been around for a while pressing for the US to lift these restrictions. Their pitch is that if China does not have access to NVIDIA chips, then they will improve their domestic chips and win the AI ​​race, but there is more. He has also warned that China has a huge energy advantagelargely thanks to government subsidies. He has already managed to convince Trump to sell chips and now the most difficult thing remains. Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | China is very clear about what it must do to win the chip war against the US: resort to its technological geniuses

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