AS CHINA’S artificial intelligence (AI) industry develops, companies are facing an imminent challenge – a lack of chips.

Yin Qi, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Megvii Technology – one of China’s top AI companies – told Caixin in a late March interview that there are only about 40,000 of chipmaker Nvidia’s data-centre-grade A100 graphics processing units (GPUs) in China. That is the kind used to build large-scale machine learning infrastructure.

Companies connect computers equipped with these chips to create powerful GPU clusters for running advanced programs, including those related to AI and machine learning – with more chips translating into more processing power.