The Rising Underdog In The Information’s AI Chip Database

For those overwhelmed by the flurry of new chip startups hoping to ride the AI wave, you’re in luck. This morning, we published our AI Chip Database, which tracks both the startups building these chips and those building the software to run them.

There’s lots in here. For instance, we make clear whether startups are making chips suitable for training AI models or using them and whether they’re specialized for certain types of models, such as large language models. (Check out this post for more takeaways.) But what sticks out to us is that more than a fifth of the companies are based in China. 

Many of these companies were founded in the last few years, reflecting how China has increasingly encouraged domestic production in response to rising U.S. restrictions on American chip technology that Chinese firms can buy. In just the past six months, the U.S. government has cracked down on American investment in Chinese AI and semiconductor startups and banned Nvidia from selling advanced AI hardware to China. (The chipmaker has found workarounds for such rules before.) It’s no wonder China is taking matters into its own hands.