China’s Huawei Launches Self-Developed AI Chips To Boost Cloud Computing Business — China Money Network
What happened: Huawei unveiled two artificial intelligence chips Ascend 910 and Ascend 310 on Wednesday. The company also introduced cloud computing services and data centers for autonomous vehicles that will run on the new chips. Huawei presented its first AI chips under the name Kirin in 2017. This time, however, the company seems more determined to speed up its cloud business.
Why it’s important: Chinese companies including Alibaba have been investing more in chipmaking after local telecommunications company ZTE almost lost a huge part of its business because of US sanctions. Alibaba is already huge in cloud services and this year it has announced a chipmaking subsidiary as well as invested in several local chip companies. ByteDance, the company behind Jinri Toutiao and Douyin, and appliance maker Gree are among other Chinese companies looking to get into the chip business.