Jack Ma-backed fintech giant Ant Group quietly and boldly moved AI development. According to a Bloomberg report, the company has successfully trained AI models using Alibaba and Howay’s Chinese-made semiconductors, reducing training costs by 20% compared to NVIDIA’s premium H800 chips.
“Jack Ma-Backed Ant Group Co. has developed a technology to train AI models that use Chinese-made semiconductors to reduce costs by 20%,” Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the issue.
“ANTs, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Huawei Technologies Co., trained their models using domestic chips using so-called mixtures of expert machine learning approaches.
At the core of this shift is a machine learning method called expert mixing (MOE). This splits AI tasks between different model components and activates only the required components. This allows Ant to get more chips from less powerful chips, reducing its reliance on high-end US hardware. According to internal figures, training from 6.35 million yuan ($880,000) to 1 trillion tokens costs around 5.1 million yuan ($706,000) when using NVIDIA gear.
The move comes as US export restrictions on advanced chips intensified, prompting Chinese tech companies to explore alternatives. Ant still uses some Nvidia hardware, but pivots to local chips highlight a bigger change. Large Chinese companies are actively working to reduce their dependence on foreign technologies.
This study was published in early March 2025 and was widely picked up on March 23rd. For Ant, it’s more than a technical victory. This shows that Chinese companies can compete at the highest level.
Nvidia remains the gold standard for AI training, but Ant’s success could mark a turning point. This is a kind of outcome that could encourage other Chinese companies to double their local solutions and add even more pressure to an already tense global chip race.
Longtime GPU Titan Nvidia faces challenges from high-tech giants like Google, Openai and Meta.
Ant Group is a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, a company founded by Jack Ma. The company was founded in 2004 as Alipay. Over the years, the ANT Group has evolved into a major player in the world’s fintech landscape, gaining great influence and prominence.
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