Chinese AI hardware resources in 2025 and beyond

This report investigates and quantifies the AI-relevant hardware resources currently existing within the Chinese mainland, as well as the development of domestic alternatives to export-controlled AI hardware technologies. Our research found that, in the short term, the primary asset will likely continue to be NVIDIA’s GPUs, primarily of the Hopper and Ampere generations. This is expected to change with the indigenization of key technologies. The key determining factors are the specifics of performance density and cost effectiveness, as well as the capacity to source and produce key hardware domestically at scale. **While insider knowledge was not available to the author, a survey of both existing analyses and reports, as well as our own analyses using primary, publicly available sources from research entities based in the Chinese mainland, provides an overview of the technology landscape as of mid-2025. ** We present our results in three parts: Part I focuses on the imported NVIDIA hardware, quantifying estimates for specific GPU numbers. **Part II presents what we found out about China’s access to – and progress in – key technologies required to produce accelerators and AI-capable facilities at scale. ** Part III concludes with our estimates of the technological readiness of an indispensable technology needed for continued, competitive leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing: EUV lithography.