China will continue to close the gap with the United States in the field of AI even with the implementation of the Stargate project

The past week was characterized by high-profile initiatives of the new American administration, among which the Stargate project was of great importance for the artificial intelligence segment, implying an investment of $500 billion in the infrastructure of computer centers in the United States over the next four years. Analysts expect that even in such conditions, China will be able to close the gap with the United States in this area.

Image source: NVIDIA

At the very least, Omdia said on Thursday: “China is making amazing progress in building AI computing centers. If he continues to maintain the current pace, the gap in the development of computing infrastructure with the United States will continue to decrease, even taking into account the implementation of the Stargate project.”

In China, municipal authorities, state-owned telecommunications companies and major players in the information technology market take part in the development of such infrastructure. According to official statistics, as of mid-last year, China had about 250 advanced data centers and other infrastructure facilities that were either operational or at a high stage of readiness. In 2023, the total computing power of Chinese data centers reached 230 exaflops, which was not enough to achieve parity with the United States.

Analysts at CMB International Securities believe that the Chinese authorities will soon begin to invest more money in the development of the national AI infrastructure. Chinese developers are already demonstrating the ability to compensate for the lack of necessary hardware resources by optimizing software models, allowing them to achieve higher performance of AI systems on relatively weak hardware.