The battle for the AI chip market is intensifying with new vigor. Nvidia's clients - Apple, Meta, and Microsoft Azure - are also participating in this process: Apple with its M4 SoC (System-on-Chip), which powers the new iPad Pro; Meta with its MTIA (Meta Training and Inference Accelerator), currently in its second iteration; and Microsoft Azure with its Maia 100 AI Accelerator. Google and Amazon are also among the major buyers of Nvidia processors.

In China, the development of AI processors is being undertaken by tech giants - Alibaba, Baidu, Huawei, and Tencent, as well as smaller developers such as Bitmain, Cambricon, Enflame, Inspur, MetaX, and Xiangdixian Computing Technology. Apart from the lack of experience, their main challenge is the inability to utilize their advanced developments in chip manufacturing at TSMC or other non-Chinese foundries due to existing U.S. sanctions.

China has more than 40 semiconductor foundries, but even SMIC, the largest and most technologically advanced, does not have access to EUV lithography equipment and therefore cannot produce large volumes of chips on processes smaller than 7 nm.