Chip race: Nvidia leads, China localises
Wall Street still points to strong demand for Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs, even as Alibaba announced an AI data centre powered by 10,000 homegrown AI chips in a clear push toward localisation. The headlines imply a bifurcating chip market: Nvidia keeping a performance edge while geopolitics speeds domestic substitution in China. (ibtimes.com.au) (archyde.com)
Nvidia is still setting the pace in top-end artificial intelligence chips, while Alibaba has opened a China data center built around 10,000 of its own processors. (investor.nvidia.com) (cnbc.com) Nvidia reported record fourth-quarter revenue of $68.1 billion on February 25, 2026, with data center revenue of $62.3 billion, and said the quarter was driven by demand for Blackwell systems. (investor.nvidia.com) Alibaba and China Telecom said on April 8 that they were launching a data center in southern China for training and inference, the two main jobs of artificial intelligence systems, using 10,000 Zhenwu chips designed by Alibaba. (cnbc.com) (techrepublic.com) A graphics processing unit, or graphics chip, is the part that does the heavy math for artificial intelligence models, and the market has split between the fastest global systems and the chips companies can still buy and deploy inside China. (nvidia.com) (cnbc.com) Nvidia’s Blackwell line is now moving from launch to broad deployment. Nvidia said CoreWeave became the first cloud provider to make Blackwell generally available, and Nvidia told investors Blackwell demand was “exceptional” in the January quarter. (blogs.nvidia.com) (nvidianews.nvidia.com) China’s push runs on policy as much as performance. CNBC reported that Chinese companies have accelerated domestic chip efforts after United States export controls sought to limit China’s access to advanced foreign semiconductors. (cnbc.com) Alibaba has been building that stack for years. Its T-Head unit unveiled the Hanguang 800 inference chip in 2019, and the company said in March 2026 that combining T-Head chips, Qwen models and cloud infrastructure had become a long-term advantage. (alibabagroup.com 1) (alibabagroup.com 2) The split does not mean Nvidia has lost China’s market overnight. It means the premium end of artificial intelligence computing is still centered on Nvidia, while Chinese cloud groups are spending to replace imported hardware where export rules and supply risk leave gaps. (investor.nvidia.com) (cnbc.com) Wall Street’s near-term read is still straightforward: Nvidia closed at $188.63 on April 10, 2026, and analysts cited by International Business Times said Blackwell demand and the production ramp were supporting a strong-buy consensus. Alibaba’s move points to a second race, where scale inside China matters as much as absolute speed. (ibtimes.com.au) (cnbc.com)
