How Huawei ascended from telecoms to China’s ‘jack of all trades’ AI leader

Although he was beaten by years of American commercial restrictions, the giant Huawei in China appeared quietly as one of the country’s competitors through the entire scene of artificial intelligence.

It does not seem that the company, which is based in the headquarters, does not seem to be Beijing’s answer to Ai Ai Chip Darling Nvidia, but it was also early in artificial intelligence models in industrial applications.

“Huawei has been forced to convert and expand its primary concentration over the past decade … due to a variety of external pressures on the company,” said Paul Triolo, partner and vice president of China at DGA-Albright Stonebridge.

This expansion has witnessed the participation in everything from smart cars and operating systems to the technologies needed to the mutation of artificial intelligence, such as advanced semiconductors, data centers, chips and large language models.

“No other technical company has been able to compete in many different sectors of high levels of complexity and barriers to entry,” Trio said.

This year, the CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang has become increasingly noisy in calling Huawei.One of the most abhorrent technology Companies in the world. “He also warned that Huawei will replace NVIDIA in China if Washington continues to restrict American chip companies exports to the Asian country.

NVIDIA exceeded $ 4 trillion of market value last week to become the most valuable companies in the world. Its advanced processors and the relevant “Cuda” computing system The standard of industry remains To train generation models and artificial intelligence applications.

But this trench might be tight, as Huawei proves that he does not only do everything, but he does it well. While American AI’s challenges like NVIDIA are long, the company’s history shows the reason for not calculating it.

Huawei, who is now Hire More than 208,000 people in more than 170 markets came from modest beginnings. It was founded by the ambitious entrepreneur Ren Zhengfei in 1987 from an apartment in Church, the company started as a small distributor for the phone key.

With the growth of a telecommunications player, strength has gained by targeting less sophisticated markets such as Africa, the Middle East, Russia and South America, before it eventually expanded to places like Europe.

By 2019, Huawei will be in a good position to benefit from Global 5G PrortTo become a pioneer in the market. Almost this time, it also flourished to one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world, and was even designing smartphone chips through its HISIILICON company to design chips.

But Huawei’s success also attracted an increasing audit of governments outside China, especially the United States, which often accused Huawei of providing a threat to national security. the Chinese company He has Such risks refuted.

Huawei’s business suffered a large setback in 2019 when it was placed in a black -commercial black list, which prevented American companies from dealing with them.

With the start of the impact of the sanctions, the consumer’s work in Huawei – as soon as the company is The largest by revenue – Half to about $ 34 billion In 2021 of the previous year.

The company is still running a penetration on artificial intelligence chips, and it pressed despite the additional US restrictions in 2020 that the company cut off from Chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Officially ASD 910 AI treatment chip as part of a strategy to build a “full wallet of artificial intelligence, and becomes a computing power of artificial intelligence.

But the US targeting of Hoyoui had an impact on the transformation of the company into a martyr -like figure in China, and based on the interest he received in 2018 when Meng and Wangu, the financial manager of Moy and the daughter of Ren, was In Canada Violations of Iran’s alleged sanctions.

As the US -Chinese technology war continued to expand and restricts the extensive advanced chips on China, Huawei was a clear option to become a national champion in the race, with more motivation and the state of artificial intelligence plans.

“The export controls have prompted paradoxes that Hawaiwi is in the arms of the Chinese government in a way that CEO Ren Chengvi has always resisted,” Trio said. In this way, the restrictions also became “stimulants” for huawei AI and programs and programs.

Another year after sales in the consumer sector, the unit began to rotate in 2023 with the release of a smartphone Analysts contain an advanced chip made in china.

The 5G chip is a shock to many in the United States, who did not expect Huawei to reach this level of progress so quickly without TSMC. Instead, Huawei is said to have been working with the SMIC Chinese chip maker, a company that was also inserted into the blacklist by the United States

While semiconductor analysts said that the scale that could result in Huawei and SMIC are very limited, Huawei has proven that he returned in the advanced chips game.

Meanwhile, reports began to appear about the new artificial intelligence processor from Huawei, ASCEND 910B, with the company benefiting from the gaps left by the export control elements on the most advanced NVIDIA chips. The huge production of the next generation 910c is It is said Already on the way.

“Huawei has made great steps to repeat the performance of high -graphics processing units using groups of lower chips,” said Jeffrey Tucson, the administrative partner of Techmoat Consulting, to fill the void left by NVIDIA.

In April, Huawei unveiled “Ai Cloudmatrix 384”, a system that connects 384 ASCEND 910C chips in a block inside databases. Analysts He said that Cloudmatrix is able to outperform the NVIDIA system, GB200 NVL72, on some standards.

Huawei not only attached to the knees, “it redefines how Amnesty International’s infrastructure works,” Analysts said Forster In the report last month on Cloudmatrix.

Meanwhile, Huawei has also developed his “Cann” software system It works as a substitute for Nafidia code.

“Winning the artificial intelligence race is not only related to the fastest chips. It also includes providing the tools that developers need to build and publish large -scale models,” the Forster report said, although the authors have indicated that Huawei products are still not integrated enough with other tools used for developers to switch quickly from NVIDIA.

The company was Publishing AI chips ascending and AI Cloudmatrix 384 in its growing wallet of artificial intelligence data centers, which are operated by the cloud computing unit, Huawei Cloud, which was created in 2017 to compete with proverbs Amazon Web services and Oracle.

These data centers, in turn, provided training capabilities and computing power used by the AI’s Huawei’s Huawei’s Huawei’s group.

Unlike Amnesty International models for other general purposes such as Openai’s GPT-4 or Google Gmini Ultra 1.0, the Huawei PanGue model is designed to support more private industry Applications across Medical sectors, financing, government, industrial and cars. Pangu has already been applied in more than 20 companies over the past year, the company He said last month.

The artificial intelligence applications application often includes that Huawei technology employees work for several months on the project site, even if it is in a distant coal mine, Jack Chen, Vice President of the Huawei’s Marketing Department Oil and gas and mining unitWhich provides digital and smart solutions to convert these industries, tell CNBC.

This research enabled the company in May Publish more from 100 electric powered trucks This can Transferring dirt or charcoal independently Using the 5G network for Telecom, AI and cloud computing services.

It is not limited to China. “This technology can be widely repeated in Central Asia, Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific,” said Chen.

Huawei also has two PANGU sources, in a move that it said will help it expand its scope and enhance the “ecosystems strategy”, which indicates the AI products that were built around climb flakes.

Speaking to “Squawk Box ASIA” from CNBC on Thursday, Patrick Moraid of Moor Insights & Strategy said he is expected to pay Huawei up in countries part of the Belt and Roads Initiative in China – an investment and development project aimed at emerging markets.

He added that the company can start building a dangerous market share in these countries for five to 10 years, and in the same way it had done before through wireless and wireless communication work.