Flagging up the struggle for semiconductor dominance in the AI race. Image: YouTube / Social Media

Chips are down in the war with China for AI supremacy 

Google’s move against American rival Nvidia illustrates the intense competition in the United States

ByChina Factor Staff

It is where the chips fall in the trillion-dollar AI race between China and the United States. Earlier this week, reports surfaced that Google had further encroached on Nvidia’s territory with a new push into the ballooning market for artificial intelligence semiconductors.

Talks have already taken place with Meta, which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger under its umbrella. The plan is for the group to act as an alternative to Nvidia’s chips at Meta’s data centers.

Google’s latest Gemini AI model, powered by AI-specialized semiconductors, has been compared to “a subtler but more important version of the DeepSeek disruption,” the Financial Times revealed, referring to the Chinese AI startup.

“[Once considered] the dark horse in this AI race, [the] sleeping giant is now fully awake,” Neil Shah, an analyst and cofounder at Counterpoint Research, told Bloomberg News.

China could no longer bet its AI future on an American supplier.

Tony Peng, REDCODE CHINA AI

Chip ahoy:

  • Still, the highly-competitive AI sector in the US is facing an existential challenge from China in the battle for semiconductor dominance.
  • Beijing has effectively banned all foreign artificial chips from state-funded data centers, the Reuters news agency reported last month.

Delve deeper: “For more than a decade, Nvidia’s chips have been the beating heart of China’s AI ecosystem … But by 2025, patience in Beijing had seemingly snapped,” Tony Peng wrote on Redcode China AI, a Substack tech site.

Between the lines: “The message was clear: China could no longer bet its AI future on an American supplier … domestic alternatives [had to] fill the void. A few contenders have emerged [such as] Huawei, Alibaba, Baidu, and Cambricon,” he said.

Big picture: To spice up the chip conflict, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told a tech summit in London earlier this month that China was “going to win the AI race.” He pointed to a growing wave of “regulations” in the US, which could stifle innovation. 

China Factor comment: Huang later posted on X that the Chinese were already just “nanoseconds” behind the Americans. Less than the blink of an AI eye.