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China is taking steps to level the playing field for its artificial intelligence start-ups, as the country’s tech giants hog AI-training computing resources already squeezed by US chip restrictions.
At least 17 city governments, including the largest, Shanghai, have pledged to provide “computing vouchers” to subsidise AI start-ups facing rising data centre costs as supplies of crucial chips become more scarce.
The vouchers will be typically worth the equivalent of between $140,000 and $280,000, according to official announcements. They can be used for time in AI data centres to train and run the companies’ large language models (LLMs) that understand and generate natural language, and other content, to perform a wide array of tasks.
Industry insiders said the move to help AI start-ups pay for computing costs comes after internet companies with cloud computing services cancelled contracts, as stricter US controls prompted them to “hog the GPUs [graphics processing units] for themselves”, according to one AI founder.
Internet giants Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance have taken measures to limit the rental of Nvidia’s GPUs and have reserved the majority of these stockpiled AI processors for internal use and important clients, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.
Over the past two years, the Biden administration has tightened China’s access to crucial AI chips, leading companies to stockpile ahead of bans, repurpose Nvidia gaming chips or resort to the black market.
Alibaba Cloud has distributed the majority of its advanced GPUs to business units within the Alibaba Group, said two employees of the cloud business. Acquiring high-performance chips has become an “arduous task”, said one manager.
ByteDance declined to comment. Tencent and Alibaba Cloud did not respond to requests for comment.
Subsidies will only tackle part of the problem, according to analysts. “The voucher is helpful to address the cost barrier, but it won’t help with the scarcity of the resources,” said Charlie Chai, an analyst at research group 86Research.
A person close to regulatory authorities said Beijing would soon roll out a subsidy programme for AI groups that were using domestic chips, as it tries to ramp up efforts to displace foreign components.
China has also been creating an alternative to Big Tech’s data centres and cloud services. A network of state-run data centres and online platforms has been built over the past year where AI companies can rent computing power.
“Chinese governments are dedicated to improving resource allocation efficiency,” said Chai, referring to Beijing’s additional plan to build 10 data centre clusters. The so-called “East Data West Computing” project is “essential for lowering energy resource consumption and powering AI workloads in an orchestrated approach,” he added.
One government official who works on data centre construction said the vouchers would reduce AI companies’ computing costs by around 40 to 50 per cent if they opted for government-run data centres.
They added that while this will “alleviate financial pressure on start-ups” in the short term, there were still stringent requirements for applicants, including a minimum revenue threshold or being part of a government-sponsored research project.
Beijing has approved at least 40 LLMs for public use, as regulators accelerate adoption of AI technology while maintaining strict oversight over its application.
This includes centralising the distribution of computing power using state-run trading platforms that broker access to cloud computing resources. Last year, Suzhou, a city west of Shanghai, set up a trading platform to “co-ordinate the city’s computing resources”, according to its website.
Traces of China’s underground chip trade can be found on such brokering sites. The Suzhou one, which partners with AliCloud and Tencent Cloud, is advertising computing clusters that include advanced Nvidia H100 chips, which the US has always banned from sale to China.
Additional reporting by Wenjie Ding in Beijing
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