avidamoeba

Great video. Steve keeps doing the good journalistic work.

Let's not slander sodomy.

Perhaps more to do with this. Google no longer has legal problems in the US under Trump.

What the 🦆

Some additional keywords on the tech behind this extended range capability:

... self-generated anode battery technology (which no longer uses traditional graphite anode material but allows elements to deposit on the current collector in metallic form, increasing volumetric energy density by 60% and gravimetric energy density by 50%)

...

Additionally, CATL's self-generated anode technology can be adapted to multiple material systems. For example, when paired with sodium-ion systems, the energy density can reach 350Wh/L; with phosphate systems, it can reach 680-780Wh/L; and with ternary systems, it can exceed 1000Wh/L.

Source

The source cites CATL, but this self-generating anode tech has apparently been studied for a while by more than CATL.

Be a shame they've left a poorly configured VPN node that allowed someone from a Chinese IP dump unknown quantities of IP. Happens all the time. And oh look the Chinese subsidiary hired some really talented people that got a new chip design in a record time!

Right, for profit companies famously have a history of just handing themselves over to totalitarian regimes.

There are Western for-profit companies who have Chinese subsidiaries developing and selling products in China. They make profits on those sales and hand them over to their shareholders in the West and in China. The Chinese government fully allows this so for-profit companies regularly do it. And yes the Chinese state often is a direct or indirect shareholder. But so could be Berkshire Hathaway. It's not about handing over the ability to profit. It is about making profit. Also, Western for-profit companies often sell themselves to Chinese firms. E.g. Smithfield Foods, Syngenta and many others.

China has no successful companies that aren't approved, controlled and often subsidized by the party.

That's an interesting assertion. As far as I'm aware it's typically the other way around. The companies that grow to be large enough or strategic enough give partial ownership to the government. Of course the government subsidizes important industries like every competent state does, but that doesn't mean it owns every company it subsidizes. There's no point in owning small fish. Some of those that grow even have foreign ownership. For example BYD has Berkshire Hathaway and BlackRock as some of its major shareholders.

So in the case of NVIDIA, it's entirely plausible for the company to move operations in say Shenzhen, retaining most of its current ownership, perhaps giving some ownership to a Chinese state company. The profits keep flowing to BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity and Jensen Huang. Pretty sure they'll approve it if it means more future profits compared to staying in the US and being unable to sell to China and others. For example if Trump decides that both EU and China are bad hombres and forbids AI chip sales to them, while the US economy tanks, decreasing the domestic sales.

Yes. There are plenty hugely successful Chinese companies. The hypothetical I'm considering is NVIDIA becoming a successful Chinese company, not an American company trying to do product development in China. It won't be a foreign company to steal IP from and there won't be a need to replace it with another one.

True. That's a problem with the China route at this point. In a few years however I'd expect SMIC to be competitive with TSMC. They're doing their damnest to get there and given the pressure and resources thrown at it, I think it's a matter of time.

I think if NVIDIA moves outside of the US, Trump would have no choice but to keep exempting their products from the import tariffs since there's no US-made alternative at the moment and there won't be one for a while. But NVIDIA may not have a choice but to move out, especially if they want to keep their market position against Chinese firms over the long run. If they stay in the US they face a likely future of being locked into the US market with the rest of the world being dominated by whatever competitive accelerators come out of China. If they move out, and especially if they move to China, they could become the CCP-blessed domestic AI hardware maker, before another Chinese firm is able to get there. They'll have the world market to export to as well as the US, for as long as the US doesn't have a competitive product. After that it'll be just the rest of the world since China's NVIDIA product would always have price advantage compared to US offerings. Of course under a China NVIDIA scenario they likely won't be able to keep their IP fully closed or their profit margins within China, and perhaps abroad.

ICE on their way. 🐗

Team Green plans to get closer to the Chinese markets by building a dedicated R&D center in China as well, which means that NVIDIA is serious about this move.

Yup, of course they are. As I said the other day, US firms for which their userbase is not the product face long term downside as the US state cuts them off of foreign markets or the foreign markets cuts them off as retaliation to the US state trade policies. If they keep their product development in the US they're facing reduced markets and increased dependence on the US state. And of course increased competition by foreign (e.g. China's Huawei) firms catching up to fill the demand gap. If they manage to fill the gap with price competitive product, there's no coming back for NVIDIA.