Jack Ma’s e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba announced on Friday it has fully acquired C-SKY, a company that claims to be China’s only chip maker that mass-produces CPU IP cores, adding to a trend among tech giants like Facebook, Google and Apple to design chips themselves to lower their dependence on chip makers, as well as fulling Alibaba’s efforts to devote to its cloud-based Internet of Things businesses.
Just one day before, the Hangzhou-headquartered company announced its research institute Damo Academy is developing neural network chips. Apart from C-SKY, Alibaba has invested in five chip companies including unicorn Cambricon.
This move comes four days after a US ban on Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE from purchasing components from US companies, triggering discussion in China about reducing dependence on foreign parts suppliers.
Source: 36Kr