Google unveils new AI chip variants as cloud demand surges

Alphabet's Google announced two new versions of its in-house AI chips, the 8tx and 8i Max, on Monday, intensifying its competition with Nvidia in the rapidly expanding AI chip market. Alphabet's stock rose over 3% in early trading following the announcement. While Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) have been primarily utilized internally for services like Search, YouTube, and Gemini, the company has started offering these chips through its cloud platform to win over enterprise AI customers.

According to Alphabet, TPU sales played a significant role in the company's results for the September quarter, with Google Cloud revenue increasing more than double to $30.71 billion.

The 8tx chip is specifically designed for government agencies and businesses in regulated industries that require secure data processing. It integrates Google's chip technology with AMD's processors and encrypts data at the hardware level. This results in up to twice the speed of the previous version without compromising performance.

The 8i Max, on the other hand, is tailored for AI applications that need to handle massive amounts of data simultaneously. It combines two chips into one package, offering extra memory and computing power. This makes it ideal for tasks such as coding assistants, mathematical reasoning, and drug-discovery processes. Bloomberg News broke the news of these new chip variants.