Svmuu reported that sources say NVIDIA has begun pitching its first independent central processing unit (CPU) product, Vera, to Chinese clients. Designed specifically for Agentic AI systems, the chip has entered mass production, marking NVIDIA's attempt to further expand its presence in the Chinese market with a CPU offering.
According to sources, some Chinese clients have already shown interest in Vera. One major Chinese cloud computing company plans to procure over 300 servers equipped with dual Vera CPUs for testing, and will decide whether to expand procurement after the tests are completed.
Built on the Arm Holdings architecture, Vera is NVIDIA's first independent CPU product. NVIDIA has previously stated that Vera's performance in AI agent-related computing tasks is 1.8 times that of comparable competitor products, and expects the product to contribute approximately $20 billion in revenue by the end of this fiscal year (ending January next year).
The report notes that as the AI industry's focus gradually shifts from model training to inference computing, CPUs and custom chips are gaining more attention. Vera also positions NVIDIA to directly compete with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which have long dominated the server CPU market.
Sources indicate that due to strict U.S. export restrictions on high-end GPUs, CPUs face relatively smaller regulatory hurdles in the Chinese market compared to GPU products. Currently, some Chinese clients plan to first deploy Vera chips for testing in overseas data centers. Meanwhile, software ecosystem compatibility and existing domestic AI chip deployment frameworks may still impact the subsequent large-scale adoption of Vera. (Reuters)