The US is preparing to curtail Chinese companies’ access to cloud computing services including Amazon.com Inc’s and Microsoft Corp’s, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.
Washington is considering requiring cloud providers to seek government permission before serving Chinese firms that employ such platforms to train artificial intelligence (AI) models, the Journal reported.
Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services are the global leaders in the business of providing Internet computing to enterprises, and compete in China with the likes of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) through local, state-affiliated data center partners.
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The administration of US President Joe Biden plans to tighten export controls announced in October last year to restrict sales of some AI chips to China, seeking to contain its rival’s development of a technology considered key to the country’s geopolitical and economic future.
Part of the measures under discussion included restricting cloud access for Chinese AI developers, which was first reported by the Journal last week.
Under the broader US Department of Commerce proposal, expected for next month, the US would revise export controls to make it harder to sell some chips to China without a license.
The move is aimed in part at Nvidia Corp’s A800 chip, which the US-based company designed after the earlier controls were announced. The product’s configuration comes just within those limits.
The US and China are escalating their technological conflict. On Monday, Beijing slapped controls on the export of metals critical to the chip, electric vehicle and defense industries, showing it has some power to retaliate against moves by the US, Japan and Europe to cut Beijing off from advanced technology.
The controls on metals, which China said were aimed at protecting national security and its interests, will require exporters to seek permission to ship some gallium and germanium products.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
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