Z.ai, the Chinese AI lab behind the GLM family of models, has completed construction of a one-gigawatt AI data centre built entirely with Chinese-made chips, according to a report from Bloomberg.
This marks one of China’s largest known AI computing deployments and a significant step in the country’s push to reduce reliance on NVIDIA hardware.
According to the report, the company is partially operating the facility, which will be used to train its frontier GLM foundation models.
A person familiar with the project said the company has also built or operates multiple AI computing clusters containing more than 10,000 chips each.
The project comes as Chinese AI developers race to replace NVIDIA accelerators with domestic alternatives following successive rounds of US export restrictions.
Huawei has emerged as the country’s largest AI chip supplier with nearly 50% market share, while Alibaba, through its T-Head unit, and Baidu are developing proprietary AI processors for their own cloud platforms.
A new generation of independent chip companies, including Biren Technology, Iluvatar CoreX, Moore Threads, and MetaX, has also expanded aggressively through IPOs and fresh fundraising, targeting AI training and inference workloads.
According to reports, DeepSeek and Z.ai have explored developing custom AI chips as well.
NVIDIA has progressively lost access to China’s AI market. Currently, NVIDIA’s H20 is the only advanced AI GPU that can be legally exported to China, and even then, shipments require US export licenses.
The H20 was specifically designed to comply with US export controls, but last April, it was made subject to an indefinite licensing requirement before the US later agreed to approve licenses for eligible exports.
More powerful AI GPUs, including the H100, H200, B200, GB200, and other Blackwell products, remain under current US export control rules.
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