No, we aren’t talking about Lays or Fritos, but AI Chips. They aren’t as tasty, allegedly, but they may be more important to the Artificial Intelligence race to the top.
AI Chips are important because they are hardware specifically designed to perform AI computational tasks with greater efficiency and performance. Now, we only need to find a way to insert these chips into annoying people (kidding, of course).
They have become so important that the United States has placed several restrictions on China’s ability to gain these precious chips while citing national security concerns. The demand for these AI Chips is even the reason that Nvidia’s stock is going through the roof, which reminds me that I should have invested more in that, to be honest.
Ultimately, this is hurting China’s bottom line as their country is aligning its money into building its own Chip empire to compete. In addition, they have been smuggling in these chips through different means and circumnavigating the export controls placed by the United States.
I guess AI Chips is the contraband that all the cool international players are trying to get. China has gone as far as stockpiling these AI Chips and recruiting foreign and technology experts with fat stacks of cash to help with their semiconductor program. Apparently, it ranges from ~$420,000 to ~$700,000 to help with this program for a short period of time. New career switch, anyone?
Experts have recommended that the United States start creating a registry of all AI Chips that are produced so that they are able to monitor and track where they are going. In addition to that, doing inspections by getting the chip owner to send them back to the United States government. All to say, we don’t want these bad boys to just be leaving off in the middle of the night.
This is a developing story, so I’ll continue to update you as things progress. There is often a phrase thrown around that data is the new oil, but maybe it should be these chips instead.