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China narrows AI development gap with US, but remains behind in advanced chips: CLSA
The China-US AI gap narrows to around three months from more than a year previously, CLSA’s head of technology research says
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China has significantly closed the gap with the US in artificial intelligence development, but remains years behind in cutting-edge semiconductors, according to analysts at investment group Citic CLSA.
The China-US AI gap has narrowed to around three months from more than a year, thanks in part to the influx of AI talent, fast technology iteration and a boom in AI applications on the mainland, said Tony Zhang, head of China technology research at CLSA, in a media briefing on Tuesday.
While Chinese companies face a shortage of high-performance processors for their AI projects because of geopolitical issues, the technology’s development has not been hindered by that constraint, according to Zhang.
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He attributed that resilience to the foresight of Chinese cloud services providers, who managed to accumulate enough AI chips for training purposes. The country has also seen a growing number of domestic chip designers develop AI processors for both training and inference tasks, he added.
CLSA’s assessment reflected how China has managed to overcome US export restrictions that have limited domestic firms’ access to advanced chips used for AI projects in data centres.
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The breakthroughs made by start-ups like DeepSeek in open-source AI models and Huawei Technologies in AI chip design have also enabled China to bolster its tech self-sufficiency efforts amid US sanctions.
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