China’s artificial intelligence groups are selling “AI-in-a-box” products for companies to run on their own premises, in a threat to the AI cloud computing services offered by the country’s big tech groups such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent.
Huawei has signed up more than a dozen AI start-ups to bundle and market their large language models with its AI processors and other hardware. Its partners include groups such as Beijing-based Zhipu AI and language specialist iFlytek.
Chinese groups are deploying the boxes to bring the advances of generative AI to on-premise, or private cloud, set-ups, which account for about half of the cloud market in the country.