Are there unused Nvidia GPUs in China?

Here’s how it works. There are loads of unused Nvidia AI and HPC GPUs in China, it seems. 01.AI, a China-based artificial intelligence startup, has embarked on a shopping spree and procured enough AI GPUs from Nvidia to keep growing for 18 months, its founder Kai-Fu Lee told Bloomberg in a brief interview.

Will 01.ai run out of Nvidia chips?

In any case, for now, 01.AI relies on Nvidia's hardware and CUDA software framework. Kai-Fu Lee is skeptical about China's ability to develop its own AI processors and underlying software that would be competitive with Nvidia's AI and HPC GPUs within the next year and a half, which is when 01.AI's stockpile of Nvidia chips will run out.

Why is Lee a champion of Chinese Ai?

Lee became a champion of the Chinese AI industry, traveling to the US to encourage Chinese grad students to consider returning home to build AI projects, and in 2018 publishing AI Superpowers, in which he argued that Chinese AI labs and companies would soon rival those in the US thanks to the country’s abundance of talent, data, and users.