Tencent can shoulder latest US tech export restrictions as internet giant has large stockpile of much-coveted Nvidia AI chips

Tencent has ‘enough chips’ for the development of its Hunyuan AI model, despite US tech export controls, according to company president Martin Lau

The internet giant was the first to put in orders for Nvidia’s H800 chip, which was designed for export to China to comply with earlier US restrictions

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Tencent Holdings has one of the largest inventories of artificial intelligence chips in China, according to company president Martin Lau Chi-ping. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 6:01pm, 16 Nov 2023Updated: 7:29pm, 16 Nov 2023

Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings said it has sufficient inventory of Nvidia Corp’s H800 chip for the development of its artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model Hunyuan, downplaying the impact of the US government’s latest semiconductor restrictions, but indicated that it will seek domestic alternatives.

“We have enough chips to continue our development for Hunyuan for at least a couple more generations,” Tencent president Martin Lau Chi-ping said in a conference call with analysts on Wednesday after the Shenzhen-based company’s third-quarter earnings results announcement.

Tencent, which runs the world’s largest video gaming business by revenue and China’s biggest social media operation, has one of the largest inventories of AI chips in the country, according to Lau. He said Tencent was the first to put in orders for the H800 chip, the China-export version of Nvidia’s H100 graphics processing unit (GPU) that was developed to comply with earlier US tech export curbs.

The US, however, last month updated those tech export controls, which now cover Nvidia’s designed-for-China H800 and A800 GPUs, making it even harder for tech companies on the mainland to access advanced chips.

Nvidia Corp’s H800 graphics processing unit, based on its H100 chip and designed for export to China. Photo: Nvidia

Lau said the updated tech export curbs will affect enterprise clients’ ability to lease use of AI chips via the company’s Tencent Cloud service in future. As such, Tencent will optimise use of its existing inventory of Nvidia GPUs.