The Compute Brief · Aug 22, 2026

China's AI compute push spans pricing changes, chips and green data centers

DeepSeek changed API billing, domestic chip and cluster developers unveiled new hardware, and green computing power projects drew major investment in Inner Mongolia.

• DeepSeek will bill weekend API calls at the off-peak rate all day from Aug. 23 Beijing time, after introducing peak-and-off-peak pricing on Aug. 17.

• Zhongcheng Hualong launched its HL200 inference chip and supernode AI cluster solution, with reported efficiency of 5.12 TFLOPS/W and scaling up to 10,240 cards.

• At the 2026 Green Computing Power Conference in Hohhot, Hohhot and Ulanqab signed 13 projects with Volcano Engine, Cambricon and others, with total planned investment of 136.1 billion yuan.

• The conference also released reports saying Inner Mongolia, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Guizhou are among the national hub nodes leading in green computing power development.

• Alibaba is shifting capital away from instant retail and e-commerce toward infrastructure and large-model capabilities, while integrating its cloud chip unit and spinning off Qwen as a separate subsidiary.

• NVIDIA denied a report that it plans to launch a China-specific AI chip by year-end and said it has no such product on its China roadmap.

• Shanghai’s Lingang New Area launched a plan for an Integrated Circuit Industry Common Technology Matching Platform, with participants including SMIC, ACM Research Shanghai and GalaxyCore.