Chinese companies bought more than one million Nvidia gaming and workstation chips in 2026, Moneycontrol reported on 13 October. The processors were not originally designed to run advanced AI systems.
Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent are expanding their AI models, services and data centres. China has significantly increased domestic chip production, but demand for computing power is growing faster than that supply can meet.
The purchases are another route by which Chinese companies have sought Nvidia computing capacity. An earlier AI Affairs report described state-backed financing for leases of restricted Nvidia servers.
Beijing has encouraged domestic processor alternatives, while US restrictions on exports of advanced chips to China remain in place.
