China’s AI compute surge heavily reliant on US chips, offshore cloud access: report
China’s access to artificial intelligence computing power will double next year, but US-designed chips will account for about 65 per cent of that capacity, an indication of its continued reliance on foreign hardware, according to new research. Total compute available to Chinese entities was expected to expand in 2027 from about 4.6 million to 8.8 million “H100-equivalents” – a metric benchmarked…
China's AI compute power is projected to double in 2027, with US-designed chips making up approximately 65% of the capacity, according to a report by the Institute for Progress (IFP). The total compute available to Chinese entities is expected to expand from around 4.6 million to 8.8 million "H100-equivalents," with remote access alone increasing to 2.8 million H100-equivalents by the end of 2027.
Despite the US maintaining a significant advantage in AI training compute, Chinese models are only 6.5 months behind their American counterparts, thanks to techniques like distillation. The report urges US policymakers to impose stricter controls on overseas cloud access, chip smuggling, and legal exports to address this reliance on foreign hardware.
Brief written by urgent.news from South China Morning Post's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
