The municipal government of Beijing plans to foster the development of an #Artificial Intelligence (AI) supply chain in the nation's capital by administering tens of millions of US dollars in subsidies to enterprises at its Yizhuang Development Zone #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖 . That initiative, which will entirely cover domestic innovation, aims to establish a leading national AI industry ecosystem valued at 80 billion yuan (US$11 billion) by the end of this year, according to the plan posted on Wednesday by the Yizhuang Development Zone, also known as the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, on its official WeChat account. The ecosystem would rely only on Chinese semiconductors, operating systems and open-source software frameworks to ensure self-sufficiency and control, policymakers said. A major focus would be to “accelerate research and development for high-performance graphics processing units”, which are essential in training AI models and building applications, while also supporting the development of chips based on the RISC-V architecture. Up to 10 million yuan in funding is expected to support other groundbreaking innovation, such as in the areas of quantum computing, optical computing and bio-intelligence. The plan reflects China's all-out innovation offensive, which has the central government and major cities turbocharging their research and development budgets, enticing top-tier international and domestic talent, and executing a systematic strategy to lead the technologies of the future amid the intensifying tech war with the US. US export restrictions on advanced technologies have limited China’s access to a range of chips from US manufacturers, including Nvidia, whose products are highly sought after for AI training and operations. The Yizhuang Development Zone also plans to continue investing in high-performance computing resources. It expects to establish two high-performance AI server clusters, each installed with tens of thousands of advanced chips, to support development of a variety of multimodal, video and 3D generative AI models. That will require up to 20 million yuan in computing subsidies and 1 million yuan in funding allocated to data centres and AI start-ups. It forms part of China’s broader “AI Plus” action plan, which aims to foster the development of AI applications across traditional sectors. Under that action plan, AI will be integrated into personal computers, smartphones and other consumer electronics. AI innovation is also expected to be rolled out in fields that include medical and pharmaceutical research, humanoid robots, smart manufacturing and autonomous driving, according to Beijing authorities. https://www.scmp.com/tech..