We built a complete production-grade inference service from scratch on a cluster of more than 100,000 Chinese-made AI accelerators. All production inference for GLM-5.3-Flash runs on this system.
It wasn't a secret either. They blogged about it last month: <a href="https://z.ai/blog/glm-5.3-flash#:~:text=Serving%20at%20Scale%20on%20Chinese%20AI%20Chips" rel="nofollow">https://z.ai/blog/glm-5.3-flash#:~:text=Serving%20at%20Scale...
very few people comprehend - how much of an asteroid level event for western AI labs this is.
china has cheap abundant power, now they can make their own inference chips (which was supposed to be a chokepoint), their models yeah can be 6 months behind the frontier - but most people don't need frontier models - small models r more than enough.
my only wish was labs like Mistral would make their own inference chips or partner up eg with established / new chip makers or companies like Oxide.
While the North American models say 'No', the chinese models say 'Go Go Go'. I guess we'll see whether the anti-consumer wins over the pro-consumer.
For non residential consumers electricity is actually more expensive in China than in the US <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-2026/prices" rel="nofollow">https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-2026/prices
Strategic industries generally get subsidised/free power.
Perhaps more than the price advantage is the prioritisation in grid infrastructure. As a strategic industrial concern in China you almost certainly get easy access to transformers, grid connections, water etc which is a big bottleneck in the US.
dada216 · · focus · HN ↗
axiosgunnar · · focus · HN ↗
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freakynit · · focus · HN ↗
gpugreg · · focus · HN ↗
dzonga · · focus · HN ↗
china has cheap abundant power, now they can make their own inference chips (which was supposed to be a chokepoint), their models yeah can be 6 months behind the frontier - but most people don't need frontier models - small models r more than enough.
my only wish was labs like Mistral would make their own inference chips or partner up eg with established / new chip makers or companies like Oxide.
vatsachak · · focus · HN ↗
g023 · · focus · HN ↗
jchook · · focus · HN ↗
Only the US sees this as a competition, new space race, Cold War, etc.
shostack · · focus · HN ↗
MrBuddyCasino · · focus · HN ↗
Also, don’t underestimate data retention and such. Big Corp will never send their LLM traffic to China.
throwawayqqq11 · · focus · HN ↗
cbg0 · · focus · HN ↗
spacebanana7 · · focus · HN ↗
Perhaps more than the price advantage is the prioritisation in grid infrastructure. As a strategic industrial concern in China you almost certainly get easy access to transformers, grid connections, water etc which is a big bottleneck in the US.