Chinese internet giant Baidu has ordered artificial intelligence chips from Huawei this year, according to an exclusive report from Reuters. In August, Baidu placed an order for 1,600 Huawei 910B Ascend AI chips as an alternative to Nvidia chips, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. The move was made ahead of new regulations by the US government in October, which imposed stricter restrictions on AI chip exports to China, including those made by Nvidia. Baidu has become a leading AI company in China with the development of its ERNIE large language model (LLM), the firm’s answer to ChatGPT. By October, Huawei had already delivered over 60% of the Baidu order, comprising approximately 1,000 chips, the report stated. The total value of the order is estimated to be around RMB 450 million ($61.83 million), with Huawei expected to fulfill the remaining chip deliveries by the end of this year. [Reuters]
