In the third quarter, the Chinese market for semiconductor components as a whole, although not the largest for Nvidia, still brought the company a solid $5.4 billion in revenue. Having lost the right to actively sell its advanced computing accelerators to Chinese clients, Nvidia is betting on the development of the Chinese automotive market, expanding its local staff of relevant developers.
Image source: NVIDIA
In particular, as Bloomberg notes, if the total number of Nvidia personnel in China by the end of this year grows by a third from 3,000 to 4,000 people, then about 200 new specialists will get work in the Beijing research center, which will focus on the development of active driver assistance systems. Nvidia’s Chinese workforce has also been expanded to include specialists in after-sales service and software development for networking solutions.
Nvidia’s components and software are used by vehicle manufacturers in the world’s largest auto market, from Chinese market leader BYD and Geely, which owns Volvo, Polestar, Zeekr, Lynk & Co and Lotus, to electric vehicle startups like Nio. and XPeng. Obviously, they need support from a supplier of hardware components and related software, which forces Nvidia to expand its staff in China.
As of February of this year, Nvidia had 29,600 employees in 36 countries. China, with its 4,000 Nvidia employees, has shown steady growth in recent years, with the company now employing about 600 people in its auto-focused Beijing office. Nvidia also recently opened a new office in the local Zhongguancun Technology Park.