Kai-Fu Lee has restated a case that has become the standard argument from Chinese industry: American restrictions on advanced chips pushed Chinese labs toward efficiency and open release, open weights spread faster than licensed APIs, and cost-sensitive markets outside the US and Europe will default to whatever is free and good enough. He extends it to labour effects and to the … [Read more...] about China’s Open-Model Advantage: Testing the Argument Against the Export-Control Record
Export controls
Nvidia Buys the Distribution Layer: Hugging Face at $12.9 Billion and the China-Model Risk Disclosure
Nvidia's agreement to acquire Hugging Face values the platform at roughly $12.9 billion, of which about $11.9 billion goes to shareholders and up to $1 billion is retention equity for employees. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval. It is Nvidia's second-largest acquisition, behind the Groq asset purchase at the end of last … [Read more...] about Nvidia Buys the Distribution Layer: Hugging Face at $12.9 Billion and the China-Model Risk Disclosure
DeepSeek Plans a 160,000-Chip Huawei Ascend Cluster in Inner Mongolia
DeepSeek intends to run more than 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT accelerators at a data centre in Inner Mongolia, according to people familiar with the plan. If it is built as described, it would be among the largest concentrations of Huawei silicon anywhere, and the largest publicly known cluster assembled without a single Western accelerator in it. Treat the number as an … [Read more...] about DeepSeek Plans a 160,000-Chip Huawei Ascend Cluster in Inner Mongolia