Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the core of the ongoing technological rivalry between the United States and China . The Trump administration took significant measures to restrict the importation of advanced AI chips designed by Nvidia , AMD , and Intel . These restrictions aim to prevent cutting-edge AI technology from reaching China , governed by Xi Jinping. Conversely, China is investing heavily in its AI infrastructure, focusing on developing its own advanced GPUs and AI models.
The competitive landscape in the AI sector goes beyond just the US-China rivalry. Over the past four years, the Chinese government has provided substantial subsidies , resulting in a surge of companies committed to large AI model development. While the expansive Chinese market offers immense potential, internal conflicts, particularly between Huawei and Alibaba , have surfaced amid this competition.
Huawei Denies Copying Alibaba
Ren Zhengfei, the founder and CEO of Huawei , made noteworthy comments in early June during an interview with a journalist from the People’s Daily. He admitted that Huawei’s Ascend GPUs lag a generation behind US chips. This admission raised eyebrows, as it is uncommon for a leading executive to acknowledge their company’s shortcomings publicly.
These statements from Zhengfei come at a crucial moment for Huawei. Just two months prior, the company announced two new AI chips, the Ascend 910d and Ascend 920 , aimed at competing with Nvidia for performance supremacy in AI applications, both domestically and internationally. Notably, Noah Ark Lab , Huawei’s research division, has successfully implemented its first large-scale model entirely on Ascend chips .
Honestagi has published a study in Github claiming a correlation between Pangu Pro Moe and Qwen 2.5 14b .
For Huawei, developing a large language model using its own chips rather than relying on Nvidia GPUs is a major achievement. However, the launch of its latest Pangu Pro Moe model —which utilizes a Mixture of Experts configuration—has not been without controversy. A research group, Honestagi , published a study on GitHub arguing that there is a notable correlation between Huawei’s Pangu Pro Moe and Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 14b model. This raises questions about the originality of Huawei’s model.
This correlation suggests that Noah Ark Lab might have trained its AI model using Qwen 2.5 14b rather than developing it independently. If true, this could imply a violation of copyright from Alibaba . Despite the accusations from Honestagi, Huawei has not publicly denied these claims. Instead, Huawei emphasizes that Pangu Pro Moe does not rely on incremental training from other manufacturers’ models.
Another critical point to consider is that Huawei asserts its development team adhered strictly to open-source licensing requirements for any third-party code used, although it has not disclosed which open-source models were utilized. Meanwhile, Alibaba has yet to respond to this controversy but may offer its perspective in the coming days. The unfolding tension between two of China’s most prominent AI companies presents an intriguing narrative as the industry continues to evolve.
Image | Huawei
More information | Reuters
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