Huawei just retasked a factory to prioritize AI over its bestselling phone

Reuters reports that Huawei will attraction connected expanding nan manufacturing of its AI chip, nan Ascend 910B, astatine nan disbursal of accumulation of its Mate 60 phones successful astatine slightest 1 facility. 

Huawei makes some its Ascend AI spot and nan Kirin chip, which powers nan Mate 60, successful 1 facility. However, accumulation successful nan works has been low, group acquainted pinch nan matter told Reuters, so nan institution now plans to prioritize nan AI chip. Demand for Ascend chips, which assistance successful training AI models, has been increasing domestically. By delaying nan accumulation of chips for Mate 60, Huawei tin attraction connected improving nan number of usable and sellable chips from nan facility. The Mate 60 helped Huawei hit Apple’s telephone income successful nan state successful 2023, writes nan South China Morning Post, which makes slowing its accumulation an absorbing stake connected AI’s value to nan company.

Chinese AI companies person a difficult clip sourcing highly sought-after AI chips for illustration Nvidia’s H100 aft nan United States imposed restrictions connected spot exports. This has pushed Chinese AI developers to usage home alternatives for illustration Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip. 

Chinese companies person been trying to works their emblem successful nan generative AI hype rhythm but are astatine a flimsy developmental disadvantage to nan US. Companies for illustration Baidu person released large connection models and chatbots to nan public, but they person yet to find nan standard of OpenAI’s ChatGPT aliases Google’s Bard. China was nan first state to travel retired pinch AI policies and requires companies moving connected AI products to spell done an support process earlier releasing them to nan public.