Alibaba T-Head Unveils Zhenwu 810E AI Chip Comparable to Nvidia H20

Alibaba's semiconductor unit T-Head has released technical specifications for the Zhenwu 810E, a fully in-house designed chip built to handle both AI training and inference workloads. The chip delivers performance broadly comparable to the Nvidia H20, the GPU Nvidia sells specifically for the Chinese market under US export restrictions. T-Head is separately exploring a spinoff and IPO after Alibaba restructured the unit as a partially employee-owned entity earlier this year. The Zhenwu 810E is part of a broader push by Chinese tech companies to build domestic chip capability as US export controls have progressively restricted access to Nvidia's A100 and H100 GPUs. Alibaba has also raised prices for T-Head compute by up to 34% following a surge in demand.