China Telecom trains MoE AI models solely on Huawei Ascend chips, pressuring Nvidia
China Telecom’s Institute of Artificial Intelligence (TeleAI) says it has developed TeleChat3 — a family of Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) large language models from 105 billion to trillions of parameters — trained entirely on Huawei’s Ascend 910B processors and MindSpore framework. TeleAI claims the Huawei full-stack met “severe demands” for frontier-scale MoE training and resolved key bottlenecks for domestic model development, though TeleChat3 benchmarks lag behind OpenAI’s GPT-OSS-120B on several metrics. The report highlights a broader push in China for domestic AI self-reliance amid U.S. export controls that restrict access to advanced U.S. chips. Recent moves around Nvidia’s H200 approvals and subsequent Chinese restrictions led suppliers to pause H200 component production and triggered roughly a 3% drop in Nvidia shares. Market watchers note policy uncertainty could swing chip and tech stocks; NVDA’s earnings on Feb 25 and China export developments are being closely watched. For crypto traders: the story underscores accelerating Chinese domestic compute capacity, potential shifts in cloud/AI service providers, and geopolitical risk that can affect tech sector correlation with crypto markets and risk appetite.
Neutral
This development is neutral for crypto markets overall. Positive: China building domestic AI training capacity reduces reliance on US GPUs and could strengthen local cloud/AI infrastructure that some blockchain and crypto projects may leverage, supporting long-term on-chain compute and local tech ecosystems. Negative: Short-term market reaction included a ~3% drop in Nvidia stock after reports of H200 shipment blocks and supplier pauses; such chip-sector volatility can spill into correlated risk assets, including crypto, raising short-term downside risk. Historically, tech/hardware supply shocks (export controls, component pauses) have caused short-lived risk-off moves in equities and crypto but have not reversed long-term crypto bullish trends tied to macro liquidity. Traders should monitor: (1) further China export policy moves and any resumed H200 shipments, (2) NVDA earnings (Feb 25) for clarity on China demand, and (3) signs of Chinese cloud providers commercializing large domestic models — each could swing sentiment. Tactical guidance: expect increased volatility and sector correlations; avoid overleveraged positions around chip/tech headlines and watch on-chain fund flows for early risk-on/off signals.