AMD takes on Nvidia, US takes on Chinese AI models and AI spending still spooks investors
Maybe Nvidia ultimately won’t win the entire AI enchilada, even as it reminded everyone this week that it offers everything you need to build AI factories. This week, Advanced Micro Devices also announced a raft of new graphics processing units, central processing units and other processors for physical AI and robotics.
Nvidia may need to look over its shoulder, but it’s still the king, and looks stronger than ever. As theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante noted, AMD CEO Lisa Su engineered an incredible turnaround, but this next one requires an entirely new kind of reinvention.
The entire AI industry is also looking over its shoulder as Chinese models continue to surprise with their frontier-level capabilities — this week from Alibaba, for one. And the AI code repository Hugging Face also employed China’s Z.ai model to battle attackers after U.S. models didn’t allow it. Meantime, OpenAI said its own AI models broke out of testing and hacked Hugging Face, and U.S. lawmakers are proposing a “kill switch” for such situations.
Anyway, the government is looking askance at the rise of Chinese models, accusing Moonshot AI of “distilling” other models to power its latest Kimi model that debuted last week. And it may crack down on Chinese model makers — though many people, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, think the charges of distillation ring a bit hollow.
