Shenzhen activates China’s first 10,000‑card AI cluster built with domestic chips

Cluster and capacity

It has been reported that Shenzhen has begun operations of China’s first 10,000‑card intelligent computing cluster built with Huawei (华为) Ascend 910C AI chips, delivering about 11,000 petaflops of compute, according to the city’s official Shenzhen Special Zone Daily. Combined with a 3,000‑petaflop phase activated last year, the facility now reportedly offers a total of roughly 14,000 petaflops of capacity. Nearly 50 organisations have signed computing‑power framework agreements for the new phase, pushing the combined booking rate across both phases to some 92 per cent.

The cluster is aimed at AI start‑ups, robotics firms and research universities in Shenzhen — China’s southern tech hub — and signals a rapid scaling of local compute infrastructure to serve model training and commercial AI workloads. “Significant upgrades to the scale and quality of Shenzhen’s computing power have positioned the city as a national leader,” Zhang Luncheng, vice‑president of robotics start‑up X Square Robot, told the local paper.

Geopolitical context and implications

Why does this matter beyond Shenzhen? Because the buildout comes amid restrictions on access to advanced Western accelerators. The US‑led export controls on high‑end chips and servers have accelerated Beijing’s push for home‑grown computing stacks and heavier investment in domestic silicon and data centre ecosystems. It has been reported that a DeepSeek study found Huawei’s Ascend 910C operates at roughly 60 per cent of the capacity of Nvidia’s H100 — a performance gap, but one that China is attempting to close by scaling hardware and integrating it into national hubs.

The activation highlights both progress and limits in China’s self‑reliance drive: more domestic capacity and eager domestic customers, but questions remain about energy costs, software ecosystems and parity with global accelerators. Will scale plus tighter integration of chips, software and services be enough to narrow the gap? Shenzhen is placing a major bet that the answer will be yes.