China chipmakers catching up fast in AI, SenseTime founder says

Hong Kong – China’s domestic artificial intelligence (AI) chipmakers are making fast progress in closing the gap on international leaders, according to SenseTime Group co-founder Xu Bing.

Asia has a shortage of computation power for AI, lagging significantly behind the United States, but China has the talent and data to make up lost ground, he said in an interview at the UBS Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong.

SenseTime, one of China’s AI pioneers, has been placed on a US investment blacklist as part of sweeping American sanctions aimed at curbing the country’s advances in AI.

China’s progress has been made more difficult by US trade controls preventing the import of Nvidia’s advanced AI accelerators. That has sparked a need for domestic alternatives from the likes of Huawei Technologies and Shanghai Biren Technology, which are also subject to US trade restrictions.

“There is a shortage of resources here in Asia in general,” Mr Xu said. “It is like a 10 times gap of the computing resources that we have here compared to the US leaders. But I think Asian markets never lack talent and never lack data.”

He added that domestic chips in China are catching up quickly, and SenseTime is working with local semiconductor companies.

Huawei has quietly become China’s chip technology development champion, having worked around US curbs to develop an advanced smartphone processor last year.

Mr Xu said it is not clear how far China is behind the US now, with some people estimating a year and others three years. But he noted that the country’s disadvantage in computing power will not be permanent.

Apart from Huawei and Biren, another chipmaker that has shown promise on the AI front is Moore Threads Intelligent Beijing. Chinese Premier Li Qiang met its chief executive officer in March on a tour of the country’s top AI and chipmaking firms, including AI developer Baidu and chip manufacturing gear maker Naura Technology Group. BLOOMBERG