China’s rapid chip rise is gathering pace

Five chart to start your day

China is accelerating its own semiconductor future. While the world watches Nvidia’s next launch, China is building depth. Not parity. Depth. A domestic stack strong enough to close the gap on its own terms. It mirrors the pattern in clean energy where battery storage has shifted from exotic to essential as costs collapse and capacity grows at astonishing speed. Both stories point to the same force that China has been supplying the word. Scale now creates its own momentum, which is what China is doing.

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CHART 1 • China’s rapid chip rise is gathering pace

China’s surge in AI chip development is moving faster than many observers realise. This chart shows that China is no longer standing still in the race for AI compute. While headlines fixate on the latest Nvidia launch, a parallel semiconductor ecosystem is scaling at extraordinary speed and it is narrowing the gap far more quickly than expected.

Nvidia remains dominant at the top end of the market. The B200 still scores around 60 on this performance index, and AMD’s MI300X sits close behind. But the real story is the depth of China’s domestic contenders. Huawei’s Ascend 910C now delivers almost half the projected performance of the leading American chips. Companies such as Hygon and Biren are building a broad semiconductor stack beneath that top tier.

China is not trying to match every chip. It is trying to build enough capability to become self sufficient and competitive on its own terms. If this trend continues, the question is how far can Beijing narrow the gap before the next generation of AI hardware arrives?

Source: Economist

All five charts point to an uncomfortable truth. The next wave of global competition will not be about software. It will be about physical scale. Energy. Manufacturing. Infrastructure. The hard stuff that cannot be faked or rushed. We are entering a period where ideas matter but execution matters much more.

I have four more charts that build on this theme but they are for paid subscribers. If you enjoy this newsletter and want the full edition consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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