Customs-based compute stats miss smuggled GPUs, domestic chips, and cloud rentals
pstAsiatech · x · 2026-10-29
Responding to a chart asking why Malaysia has so much compute, this thread explains why customs-based GPU counting distorts the US-China compute gap analysis:
- Location, not ownership: Epoch estimates 16M of the 20M H100-equivalents sold since 2022 sit with US-headquartered clouds; Microsoft/Google clusters in Johor or Ireland count as Malaysia/EU, and ByteDance's Johor cluster counts as Malaysia, not China.
- Smuggled GPUs: Epoch separately estimates 660,000 H100-equivalents smuggled into China by 2025 — roughly 3% of the global AI compute pool, comparable to xAI's entire capacity.
- Domestic accelerators: Huawei Ascend, Alibaba, Tencent, Cambricon, Moore Threads, Biren, Enflame, Hygon chips never cross a border and are likely missed, which matters more toward 2027.
- Remote access: Chinese firms renting overseas cloud GPUs don't appear in China's share at all; Gulf players like G42, Humain and Stargate UAE are hidden in "Other."
Related event: Smuggled GPUs equal 660K H100s; compute stats miss key gaps(2 posts)→
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