How expensive is AI, really? We once measured compute in GPU counts. Now OpenAI and NVIDIA measure it in gigawatts. On 17 August, the PORTS-Pike project disclosure showed OpenAI building world-class AI infrastructure in Ohio. OpenAI said it has secured about 8 GW of IT capacity at the site, with NVIDIA providing credit support for … Read more
Future MCU competition is not just about performance, but who understands the application better, said Yang Ping, marketing director of Nation Technologies, at the Munich Shanghai Electronics Fair. The fair opened on 1 July in Shanghai. Amid the displays, control-chip innovation around robots and AI infrastructure stood out. As an MCU leader in AI, Nation … Read more
PChome reported on 17 August that Apple is grappling with a memory shortage that has pushed up production costs and created supply-chain risk. To relieve the crisis Apple wants to bring in Chinese supply and has already been testing memory from ChangXin Memory, also known as CXMT. CXMT’s memory passed Apple’s validation, then Washington stepped … Read more
Recently, Jieluo Intelligent Equipment (Suzhou) held a groundbreaking for its headquarters project in Wuzhong district. The site covers 42.5 mu, about 2.8 hectares, with roughly 70,000 square metres of floor area and total investment of 1.2 billion yuan. It will build a headquarters base producing 2,000 trackless-navigation robots, known as AMRs, and 500 wafer smart-storage … Read more
Qianhe Yibang, a pioneer in 3D compute-in-memory chips, has closed a Series B of over 2 billion yuan. The round gathered a heavyweight mix of state capital and financial investors, including the national structural-adjustment fund, China Mobile’s chain-leader fund, Sequoia-sister vehicles, Hillhouse-linked and other first-tier institutions. NetEase Youdao and China Mobile’s chain-leader fund, long-term shareholders … Read more
Yuanchuan Micro, a startup building inference chips, has closed a Pre-A round of several hundred million yuan. The round was led by IDG Capital, with Futong Capital, Jiukun Venture, Shangqi Capital, Shunxi Fund and Xuhui Science City Investment joining. It is the firm’s fourth raise since the start of 2026, and the money will go … Read more
Sunzhan, founded in 2022 and still around twenty people, builds custom RISC-V processor cores (CPU, DSP, NPU) for domain-specific architectures. Founder Zeng Yi argues that AI has moved the decision over chip architecture out of the chip company and into the AI company: the model now dictates the silicon, and RISC-V’s freedom to add custom … Read more
China has published the world’s first national-level capability-evaluation system covering the full automotive-chip chain. The State Administration for Market Regulation, through the certification and accreditation body CNCA, approved and released five certification and accreditation industry standards that build a structured framework for assessing institutions across the automotive semiconductor sector. China releases the first certification standards … Read more
Cambricon’s first-half revenue reached 5.996 billion yuan, up 108 per cent, while Moore Threads narrowed its loss to 11.56 million yuan as China’s domestic AI chips ride demand and US export limits in
On 12 August, SiEngine announced that its self-developed 7-nanometre automotive-grade AI accelerator, the Tiangong 100 (NNA100), has entered full mass production and begun batch supply to OEMs and Tier-1 partners. The chip is a standalone, plug-in accelerator for on-device agent AI, built to give local large models a complete domestic compute base and fix the … Read more