China's official technology security bodies on Tuesday certified nine domestically designed AI processors for state procurement, according to the South China Morning Post, creating a brand-new "AI training and inference chips" category under the country's Anke security certification framework. The approved products include Huawei's Ascend 310 and Ascend 910 processors, Alibaba's T-Head Zhenwu M530 and M890, and chips from Biren Technology, Hygon Information Technology, Iluvatar CoreX, MetaX, and Moore Threads. Two of China's most prominent AI chip developers, Cambricon Technologies and Baidu-backed Kunlunxin, didn’t appear on the list.
The certifications are valid for three years and were issued jointly by the China Information Technology Security Evaluation Centre and the National Secrecy Science and Technology Evaluation Centre. Their approvals function as a de facto procurement catalog for government agencies, central state-owned enterprises, and other entities covered by Beijing's Xinchuang initiative, the long-running campaign to replace Western hardware and software across sensitive Chinese IT systems.
