Baker: $1B in smuggled Nvidia chips won't alter US-China AI race
Gavin Baker · OpenAI's GPT-5 Flop, AI's Unlimited Market, China's Big Advantage, Rise in Socialism, Housing Crisis · Aug 9, 2025 · at 1:29:40
Gavin Baker, Managing Partner of Atreides Management, evaluates reports of illicit Nvidia GPU smuggling into China following tightened export restrictions.
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“A billion dollars worth of GPUs. It's not enough to really move the needle, you know, even if they are Blackwell's the latest and greatest, you know, it's better than having none if you're China. But I mean, it's just, you know, it's not like a 10, twenty billion dollar Blackwell cluster like are being stood up all over America by hyperscalers. So I think it's going to be hard to stop. I think it's happening at a scale that is... Yeah, it's not comparable to Colossus. So it's just, it's not going to be decisive in this, you know, AI, you know, race that certainly China believes we're in.”
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