Chinese tech giants reveal how they’re dealing with U.S. chip curbs to stay in the AI race

Tencent and Baidu, two of China’s largest technology companies, revealed how they’re keeping in the global artificial intelligence race even as the U.S. tightens some curbs on key semiconductors. The business’ methods include stockpiling chips, making AI models more efficient and even using homegrown semiconductors.

While the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump scrapped one controversial Biden-era chip rule, it still tightened exports of some semiconductors from companies including Nvidia and AMD in April. Big names in the sector addressed the issue during their latest earnings conference calls.

Martin Lau, president of Tencent — the operator of China’s biggest messaging app WeChat — said his company has a “pretty strong stockpile” of chips that it has previously purchased. He was referring to graphics processing units (GPUs), a type of semiconductor that has become the gold standard for training huge AI models.

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