Reuters: Nvidia to Launch Vera Chip for China Market, Possibly as Soon as August

(CNA, San Francisco, June 11, Comprehensive Report) Three sources familiar with the matter revealed that Nvidia has informed its Chinese customers that the new Vera central processing unit (CPU), designed for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, could be launched as early as August, and customers can now begin placing orders.

A Reuters report highlights that this move shows the world's most valuable company is rapidly shifting its focus to this new product, hoping to reverse a sharp decline in its performance in the Chinese market. Prior to this, shipments of Nvidia's second-most powerful AI chip, the H200, to China had been stalled for months.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated last October that due to the impact of U.S. export controls on advanced chips and Beijing's strong push for self-reliance in key technologies, Nvidia's market share in China had effectively dropped to zero.

This move also further heats up the competition between Nvidia and major CPU manufacturers Intel and AMD. Both companies are actively increasing their supply to capture the server CPU market needed for AI data centers.

The sources, who declined to be named as the discussions were confidential, said some Chinese customers have expressed interest in the Vera chip. This is Nvidia's first standalone CPU designed specifically for agent AI, which refers to AI systems capable of autonomously performing tasks.

The Vera chip is currently in mass production and is primarily used for the computations required to run AI agents. Nvidia claims the chip can perform up to 1.8 times faster than competing processors in the same class.

When Nvidia unveiled Vera in March of this year, Huang predicted the chip would become the company's next billion-dollar business. At the time, Nvidia also stated that leading cloud giants, including Alibaba and ByteDance, were collaborating with Nvidia to deploy Vera, but did not specify whether the actual procurement process for the chip had begun.

Nvidia declined to comment on the matter. Alibaba and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment. (Translation: Chen Yu-ting) 1150612