The Gist
← Back to today's brief

Track This Theme

China's Vertical Integration Reaches the Application Layer

China is assembling a domestically controlled AI stack — from foundry consolidation and advanced packaging through custom inference chips and frontier models — that increasingly enables competitive AI deployment at scale without dependence on Western components, models, or cloud services.

3 signals tracked

  1. State equity, photonic bets, and cost-competitive models signal structural self-sufficiency

  2. Cambricon revenues double; SenseTime targets inference layer free of NVIDIA

  3. China's vertical integration strategy creates asymmetric advantages that export controls cannot easily address