Chinese AI companies buy 1 million Nvidia GPUs in a single year, report claims
A new report has revealed China may have bought up 1 million Nvidia GPUs for AI this year.
Chinese technology firms reportedly purchased over a million Nvidia GPUs in a single year to address AI computing power shortages, according to a Financial Times report. Industry insiders attribute this surge to a combination of China's expanding AI sector and U.S. export restrictions on semiconductor technology. Despite the growth of domestic AI chip production, Chinese companies are still falling short, with demand exceeding 5 million GPUs while only 3.5 million are domestically manufactured.
Nvidia's gaming and workstation processors, such as the RTX Pro 6000D, RTX Pro 5000, and RTX 5090, are filling these gaps due to their compliance with U.S. export controls. While these Blackwell chips may not match Huawei's Ascend 910C and other homegrown offerings, they are suitable for less demanding AI tasks, such as pretraining. However, the RTX 5090's price has escalated to a staggering $7,199, making it scarce, with only three third-party resellers currently offering it.
The dominance of Nvidia's CUDA software continues to attract Chinese tech companies, even as Huawei's alternative, Cann, gains traction. The enthusiast GPU market has also faced challenges, with Nvidia halting RTX 5090 production in favor of a 24GB RTX 5080 flagship, signaling potential stagnation in the enthusiast segment.
Written by urgent.news from Tom's Hardware's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
