Chinese Firms Cut Nvidia Dependence, Back Homegrown Chips as Zelostech Scales 25,000 Vehicles
Updated
Updated · CNBC · Jun 1
Chinese Firms Cut Nvidia Dependence, Back Homegrown Chips as Zelostech Scales 25,000 Vehicles
2 articles · Updated · CNBC · Jun 1
Zelostech said it will diversify away from Nvidia over the next one to two years, using Chinese and other chips in self-driving systems as lower hardware costs become critical to scaling autonomous fleets.
Two Nvidia Orin chipsets now power each vehicle, but the company said domestic chips would be far cheaper; Zelostech already operates more than 25,000 logistics vehicles in over 20 countries, far ahead of Waymo's roughly 4,000.
BYD, Nio and Xpeng have also unveiled in-house driver-assist chips, while Chinese AI developers including MiniMax, Kimi and DeepSeek are optimizing models to run on local semiconductors rather than Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem.
Goldman Sachs expects the domestic-chip pivot to accelerate through 2026-2028, and investors say Beijing has an incentive to force real-world use so Chinese chips improve faster even though Nvidia may still be needed for three to five years.
Nvidia's mainland China and Hong Kong revenue is already shrinking, pushing the company to deepen investment elsewhere in Asia and seek narrower footholds in China such as robotics partnerships.
Beyond Nvidia's losses, will China's chip independence lead to cheaper cars globally or a fractured, less innovative market?
Is China's pivot from Nvidia creating a completely separate, self-contained universe for the future of cars?