Awhile back export controls were brought up and we had a little discussion about Nvidia and how the Biden administration banned export of their H200 chips to China. NVIDIA then built a chip to export that was export control compliant. It is a H20 chip and it was just banned for export. Price of NVDA took a big whack as a result.
My wife just sent me this post from LinkedIn In. It’s techy talk but I found it interesting. I am a believer in using a firm hand with the data and tech stealing Chinese but I found this point of view worth reading. It follows below.
The biggest news in AI this week wasn’t NVIDIA getting blocked from the Chinese market with H20s—it was China proving they’re less than a year behind in AI infrastructure.
Huawei just launched CloudMatrix 384, their answer to NVIDIA’s GB200. This isn’t just another server rack—it’s a full sovereign AI platform: chips, interconnects, system design, and full-stack software, all vertically integrated and purpose-built for China’s open-source AI ecosystem, including DeepSeek.
Here’s what matters:
• CloudMatrix is designed for the same frontier-scale workloads as GB200 NVL72—hundreds of petaflops, rack-scale deployment, modular design.
• It’s already live in Huawei’s own data centers and fully aligned with China’s national AI priorities. This isn’t just hardware—it’s a strategic asset they seek to deploy globally.
• China’s play is clear: vertically integrated, sovereign infrastructure that is competitive and relevant, but prioritizes political independence for customers and economic control of the future over raw efficiency.
Yes, GB200 still leads in performance. No doubt. But Huawei’s CloudMatrix is “good enough”—and in infrastructure, good enough at scale is more than enough to compete in this environment, especially in markets where trust in U.S. technology policy has eroded and where energy isn’t a limiting factor. CloudMatrix noticeably lags behind NVIDIA in power drawl but China is not power constrained. China is silicon constrained.
Export controls just got less relevant, yet again. We’re staring at the guardrails hoping we don’t hit it while China’s flooring it toward the next checkpoint.
We won’t win by slowing others down. We win by moving faster and focusing on the end destination.