Alibaba e Baidu da China abandonam Nvidia por chips projetados internamente

Os gigantes tecnológicos chineses estão cortando os laços com a Nvidia em meio a tensões geopolíticas—e apostando alto em soluções domésticas.

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Alibaba e Baidu estão migrando massivamente para processadores desenvolvidos internamente, reduzindo drasticamente a dependência dos chips da Nvidia. A mudança representa um golpe significativo para a Nvidia no maior mercado de semicondutores do mundo—e um salto ousado para a autonomia tecnológica da China.

Os novos chips prometem desempenho comparável com soluções ocidentais, mas com controle total da cadeia de suprimentos. A estratégia não é apenas sobre economia—é sobre soberania tecnológica.

Os investidores ficaram eufóricos—como sempre ficam com qualquer movimento que cheire a independência de fornecedores americanos—mesmo que os custos iniciais façam o fluxo de caixa chorar. Porque no mundo das criptomoedas e tech, a narrativa sempre supera os fundamentos—pelo menos até o próximo relatório trimestral.

Breaking reliance on U.S. hardware

Over the years, Chinese companies building large-scale AI systems have relied heavily on Nvidia’s hardware, particularly the H100 and its successors.

Nvidia is the market leader in the GPU space, known to be part of the critical infrastructure components in the AI boom. However, Chinese companies can’t get their hands on the most advanced Nvidia chips, as the U.S. government has progressively tightened the noose around getting those chips, citing national security reasons.

However, last month, Cryptopolitan reported that Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, said he was discussing with Washington to push for the sale of some advanced versions of Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell chips. Despite this, it still seems that the most powerful models remain off limits.

The restrictions have accelerated Beijing’s push to develop a domestic semiconductor ecosystem, backed by billions of dollars in state subsidies and pressure on national champions to cut reliance on U.S. suppliers.

Alibaba’s Zhenwu and Baidu’s Kunlun chips

Alibaba’s semiconductor arm has designed the Zhenwu processing unit to support cloud-based AI workloads.

Baidu has been working with its own Kunlun line of AI accelerators. The latest P800 version is being used to train newer versions of Ernie, the company’s flagship large language model. Baidu has also positioned Kunlun as both a cost-saving tool and a hedge against foreign sanctions.

For now the switch is partial as both companies still continue to rely on Nvidia chips for their most advanced systems, especially those involving very large training runs where performance gaps remain. But the willingness work with Chinese-made alternatives in production environments is a major step in the move away from American tech.

Implications for global AI competition

For Nvidia, the development is a warning sign as China has been its largest overseas market. A successful move away from the America chipmaker by Chinese firms to home-grown GPUs could end demand for U.S. chips and greatly impact Nvidia’s market share and balance book, even when import restrictions are removed.

For Alibaba and Baidu, the ability to design and control their own hardware could lower costs and help them align with Beijing’s industrial policies.

Matching Nvidia is still a longshot, but it’s looking closer with the latest development. The firms still have to match Nvidia’s performance and ecosystem support, which boasts advanced software frameworks such as CUDA.

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