Hello Betamax, When you think of AI chips, you probably think of Nvidia first. As well as owning mindshare in the space, the US company has an estimated 80% to 95% of the graphics processing unit (GPU) market share. That level of dominance is what made some of the details in today's top story, written by my colleague Scott, so surprising to me. In his article, he details how Silicon Valley-based semiconductor firm Cerebras makes chips that it says can perform key AI workloads up to 15x faster than competitors and transmit data orders of magnitude more quickly than Nvidia chips. So why isn't Cerebras dominating Nvidia and consigning Jensen Huang's leather jacket to the dustbin of history? That's partly because the best tech doesn't always win. Nvidia has spent decades building CUDA, a software ecosystem so deeply embedded in AI development that many customers find it easier to stick with Nvidia than switch to faster alternatives. But there's also a harder constraint: US export controls mean Cerebras can't actually ship its chips to most of the markets it's targeting, including Southeast Asia. While it can provide access to its most advanced chips via the cloud and APIs, that's a long way from the sovereign AI infrastructure the region is racing to build. It's another reminder that Southeast Asia is increasingly being caught in the crossfire of the US-China tech war, even when the tech it wants comes from US-based companies. Speaking of export controls, they're not just a hardware problem. For today's Spotlight, we also look at what a US government ban on foreigners accessing Anthropic's latest model means for Southeast Asia. Peter Cowan, engagement editor |
