Huawei is not the only one seeking to challenge Nvidia. There are four other “little dragons” knocking on the door
“AI” may be one of the words of the year, but “funding round” is a concept that wouldn’t be far behind in the competition. The unicorn is a OpenAI that, if in 2024 it prepared for exceed 100 billion dollarstoday It is bigger than Coca-Cola or Samsung. He has achieved it thanks to money injected by third partiesand Chinese companies want to follow the same strategy as American companies with only one goal in mind: erase the United States from the equation. It’s the ‘Delete A’ plan. Biren. Talking about Chinese artificial intelligence is talking about deepseek and a few other models, but above all hardware companies like Huawei. Their GPUs are the ones that are helping for the Chinese AI field to flourish, and within those GPU companies is Shanghai Biren Technology. As we read in SCMPhas begun a financing round that seeks to raise more than 620 million dollars. Founded by Nvidia and Alibaba veterans, Biren has to his credit BR100one of China’s promises of raw performance to power the demanding data centers needed to train the artificial intelligence. And, unlike others that have opted for Chinese markets, Biren has chosen Hong Kong to attract international capital more easily. They are not the only ones in this race. Moore Threads. If Biren has Nvidia veterans on his team, Moore Threads is directly led by Zhang Jianzhongwho headed Nvidia in China. Perhaps, it is China’s most accurate response to Nvidia itself, and the reason is that it seeks replicate Jensen Huang’s business model combining 3D graphics, for a growing Chinese ecosystem of gamers, and GPUs for AI. To their credit they have the recent architecture Huaganga series that promises 50% more computing density compared to the company’s previous generation of chips, while being ten times more energy efficient. That efficiency is key to keeping AI operating costs at bay, something of vital importance for a China focusing on cheaper artificial intelligencebut functional as soon as possible. And saying that it is Nvidia’s great Chinese rival is not shooting with blank bullets. On the one hand, they are Huashan chips focused on massive clusters of up to 10,000 cards to train LLMs. On the other hand, the chips Lushan that feature hardware ray tracing for the video game market. New Moore Threads GPUs support major gaming APIs little dragons. When Moore Threads debuted on the Shanghai stock market earlier this month, Its shares skyrocketed 500% on the first day, demonstrating that the Chinese market wants to have “its Nvidia”. Biren and Moore Threads are two of the legs of the table. The other two are MetaX (formed by former members of AMD and focused on computing power) and Enflame (a company backed by Tencent and who develop AI systems in the Cloud for Tencent itself). Are known as the “four little dragons of AI” (although other startups are known the same), four of the most promising GPU startups in China that, together with Huawei that has taken giant steps with its AScend 910Dthey have only one objective. “Delete A“Delete the United States. In 2022, when it was still recent the veto of Huawei by the United States in it escalation of the trade war between the US and China, China’s State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission launched Document 79. It was an initiative to encourage the creation of technology that would turn its hardware companies into heavyweights in the global industry. However, there was something else. According to Wall Street Journalthis document has an unusual level of secrecy and an underlying idea: delete United States. Hence the ‘Delete A’ or ‘Delete America’. As? Making all state-owned companies operating in strategic sectors (such as finance, telecommunications, defense or energy) replace foreign software and hardware with domestic alternatives. When? Before of 2027. To do this, national options must be given, and hence the boost to Huawei and startups like these “little dragons.” Although it has also given headaches to companies that have not been able to access Nvidia chips such as Nvidia H20 because they must opt for native solutions, less powerful or optimized in some aspects. Chinese sovereignty. And this development is not just a whim of China, but a necessity. Huawei, Enflame, Moore Threads and Biren, among many others, are on the Entity List of the US Department of Commerce. This prohibits trading with Western companies and access that foreign technology, although more recently the United States has loosened the rope, allowing Nvidia can sell its H200 chips to China… under certain conditions. It is a clear movement resulting from “if China is going to have the technology anyway, let’s take advantage while we can.” And it is because Huawei is working on a open alternative to Nvidia’s CUDA technologythe real ace up the company’s sleeve. Because it is no longer about technical muscle, but about the “language” that the AI speaks. And when China manages to develop this “interpreter”, that is when they will have taken the real leap forward in the development of their tools and in the search for that sovereignty. Images | BirenMoore In Xataka | Big tech is starting to pawn grandma’s jewels for AI: it’s a worrying symptom
