- AI chip restore corporations in China are thriving attributable to heavy demand surge
- Smuggled GPUs gasoline a booming underground restore market amid US export restrictions
- Chinese language retailers simulate knowledge facilities and repair tons of of chips month-to-month at scale
A quiet however rising enterprise has emerged in China that focuses on repairing Nvidia’s superior AI chips, regardless of strict US export controls.
Studies from Reuters discovered round a dozen small corporations, primarily primarily based in Shenzhen, claiming they service massive numbers of Nvidia’s H100 and A100 GPUs, regardless that these chips had been formally banned from sale to China in 2022.
One firm advised the information company it repairs as much as 500 Nvidia AI chips each month – and with roughly 12 related corporations working year-round, that might quantity to tens of hundreds of chips yearly.
Vital demand
Many of those models are worn down from heavy use, particularly as some have run across the clock for years in AI coaching workloads.
“There may be actually important restore demand,” Reuters was advised by the co-owner of a Shenzhen agency that moved into AI {hardware} in late 2024.
That demand led to the creation of a second firm purely to deal with AI chip restore.
Their facility features a server room that may simulate knowledge middle situations with as much as 256 servers.
One other store that shifted from GPU leases to repairs advised Reuters it fixes round 200 chips monthly, usually charging about 10% of the unique buy value.
Repairs can embody fan alternative, circuit board fixes, reminiscence diagnostics, and software program testing.
Nvidia can not legally assist or substitute restricted GPUs inside China. An Nvidia spokesperson mentioned solely the corporate and authorised companions are approved to supply the mandatory service and assist, including that working restricted chips with out full infrastructure is just not viable long-term.
The possibly excessive failure charge raises considerations about what’s going to occur to tens of hundreds of ageing A100s and earlier GPUs as soon as they fail.
The existence of such a restore sector is all the way down to the widespread smuggling of banned chips into China, one thing we’ve reported on beforehand.
Whereas Nvidia lately started providing the H20 GPU in China to adjust to export restrictions, many shoppers there nonetheless desire the banned H100 for coaching LLMs.
