China's Meituan Breaks New Ground with AI Model Trained on Domestic Chips

BEIJING: Chinese tech firm Meituan has launched a new artificial intelligence model, a significant move in the global tech rivalry. The company claims it is the first model of its scale to be trained using domestically developed computer chips.

The announcement comes as China accelerates efforts to build its own advanced semiconductor industry, responding to U.S. restrictions on cutting-edge chip exports.

Meituan unveiled LongCat-2.0, a large language model with over a trillion parameters. The company states it was fully trained and operates on a cluster of 50,000 domestic chips, though it did not name the specific Chinese chipmaker.

This achievement is a milestone for China's AI sector. Training competitive models requires immense computing power, a capability previously believed to rely heavily on advanced chips from industry leader Nvidia.

The company's research team began exploring domestic chip use in 2023. Meituan has also invested in China's homegrown semiconductor companies, including Moore Threads and MetaX.