TechCheck TechCheck Takes: China’s next breakthrough moment is in AI hardware 1/28/26
Jan 28, 2026
Naveen Rao, an AI hardware and systems entrepreneur who founded Unconventional AI and previously worked at Databricks, joins to unpack China’s hardware pivot. He explains how domestic chips, cheap power and integrated systems are being scaled. They discuss manufacturing workarounds, efficiency vs brute force strategies, and why new compute paradigms matter.
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State-Led Hardware Scaling
- Beijing is bankrolling domestic chip production and creating demand by steering state-funded data centers away from foreign chips.
- That policy mix accelerates China's hardware ecosystem even without parity at the cutting edge.
Quantity Over Per-Unit Performance
- China compensates for lagging chip performance by deploying more machines, power, and engineers — a "Costco" scale strategy.
- That brute-force approach trades efficiency for availability and rapid scale-out.
Power As A Strategic Edge
- Power is a core strategic asset: China is building energy capacity faster and can centrally allocate it to AI.
- That ability to launch large power projects at scale gives China a practical AI infrastructure advantage.