BEIJING (Reuters) – Beijing city authorities announced subsidies for companies buying domestically produced artificial intelligence (AI) chips, as China seeks to expand its semiconductor industry and cut its dependence on foreign technologies.
The amount of the subsidies was not specified in a document describing the initiative from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology dated April 24.
“Companies purchasing domestically controlled GPU chips for intelligent computing services will receive assistance based on a certain percentage of their investment,” the document said, referring to chips known as graphics processing units (GPUs). .
As part of this initiative, the city is aiming for 100% autonomy in smart IT infrastructure hardware and software by 2027.
Achieving self-sufficiency in AI chips, essential for training AI models, has become an urgent task for China as the United States tightens restrictions on the export of advanced computing products to the country, citing national security issues.
Restrictions announced by the US Department of Commerce late last year prevented exports to China of advanced chips such as the A800, H800 and H100 from market leader Nvidia.
China is cultivating its own AI chip industry in which Huawei Technologies’ Ascend 910 chips are widely seen as a potential alternative to products from U.S. rival Nvidia.
Government-linked entities, known as “intelligent computing centers,” are the main buyers of domestic AI chips.
(Reporting by Liam Mo and Brenda Goh; editing by Christopher Cushing)
