From Profit at Pakistan Today, July 26:
Despite tight US restrictions, boutique firms in Shenzhen are fixing hundreds of smuggled H100 and A100 GPUs monthly as demand surges among AI developers and military-linked buyers
Demand in China has begun surging for a business that, in theory, shouldn’t exist: the repair of advanced Nvidia artificial intelligence chipsets that the U.S. has banned the export of to its trade and tech rival.
Around a dozen boutique companies now offer repair services, according to two such firms in the tech hub of Shenzhen which say they predominantly fix Nvidia’s H100 graphics processing units (GPUs) that have somehow made their way to the country, as well as A100 GPUs and a range of other chips.
Even before it was launched, the H100 was banned from sale in China in September 2022 by U.S. authorities keen to rein in Chinese technological development, particularly advances that its military could use. Its predecessor, the A100, was also banned at the same time after being on the market for over two years.
“There is really significant repair demand,” said a co-owner of a firm that has been fixing Nvidia’s gaming GPUs for 15 years and began working on AI chips in late 2024.
Business has been so good that the owners created a new company to handle those orders, which now repairs up to 500 Nvidia AI chips per month. Its facilities, as shown in social media advertising, include a room which can accommodate 256 servers, simulating customers’ data centre environments to conduct testing and validate repairs....
....MUCH MORE
Also at Profit, August 10:
Pakistan unveils national artificial intelligence policy to create 3 million jobs...