ByteDance, one of the largest Chinese AI firms, is considering acquiring a vast arsenal of Huawei's AI chips to train a new model solely from in-house equipment.
ByteDance Rapidly Upscales Huawei's AI Chips To Cater Less-Intensive AI Tasks, Ultimately Reducing NVIDIA Dependency
It seems like the adoption of Chinese in-house AI solutions will grow rapidly, as now only the government is pushing the narrative, but the regional tech giants have now also forced their ways out of NVIDIA due to the constant revisions in US trade policies and the uncertainties associated. The only way to get out of the situation is by switching to domestic AI solutions, such as those from Huawei, and according to Reuters, ByteDance now plans to stockpile Huawei Ascend 910B AI chips, with plans to train a new AI model with the inferencing power onboard.
The report says that ByteDance has already purchased over 100,000 Ascend 910B chips this year, but due to Huawei's confined supply situation, the firm has only received 30% of the total order. Despite this, Chinese firms are still heavily optimistic about Huawei and its AI solutions, and according to ByteDance, they plan to use the pool of Huawei's chips for low-power inferencing tasks, ultimately putting their high-end NVIDIA chips to functions of more priority.
For those unaware, ByteDance is one of the largest purchasers of AI equipment in China and is also a top NVIDIA customer regarding hardware acquisition, mainly the H20 AI accelerators. The firm is said to have over 10 million active users for its AI services, which means that the company is now significantly dependent on upscaling existing computing power to sustain competition. By acquiring Huawei's Ascend 910B chips, the firm will have access to a more extensive hardware base, but yet again, Huawei is experiencing supply chain issues, so there are problems everywhere.
We recently reported on Huawei's plans to upgrade existing AI offerings by introducing the advanced Ascend 910C AI chip, designed to cater to the competition of NVIDIA. The chip is said to offer power equivalent to NVIDIA's H100 AI accelerators, so with that debuting in the markets, we will see the firm gobbling up a gigantic share of NVIDIA in the domestic markets.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
