“The United States has exaggerated Huawei’s capacities-we are not yet so strong”concedes Ren Zhengfei, adding that his chips still have “a generation of delay” on American technology. Far from the warrior speeches or victim complaints, the founder and CEO of Huawei delivers his impressions in an interview with the people’s daily life, the Official Journal of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and taken up by Global Times. While the United States is increasing warnings and sanctions, especially against Huawei Ascend Flea dedicated to artificial intelligence, we could expect a fiery reaction. Instead, Ren Zhengfei takes everyone on the other hand, confirming that his business is late.
Huawei is late, but that won’t stop him
A modesty that borders on provocation, especially when it is put in perspective with the declarations of the boss of Nvidia, Jensen Huang. The latter, whose ultra-performative fleas are now prohibited from sale in China, sees in these restrictions the reason why Huawei has become a “formidable” competitor. In short, the American sanctions would have created the monster they sought to shoot down.
Asked about the state of mind that animates him in the face of this blockade, Ren Zhengfei sweeps the question of a back of hand. “I didn’t think about it; Thinking is useless. We must not dwell on the difficulties, we just have to act and move forward, step by step “. This philosophy is the common thread of Huawei’s survival and rebirth strategy since 2019. The Chinese company does not complain, it adapts, but how to fill this famous “Delay of a generation” ?
This is where Huawei’s vision is revealed and since the physics of individual components are currently unfavorable to it, the company changes the rules of the game. “We use mathematics to compensate for physics, approaches that do not follow Moore’s law to complete Moore’s law, and cluster calculation (cluster computing) to make up for the limits of a single chip”explains the founder. Clearly, Huawei connects less powerful fleas to obtain, in the end, a performance comparable to the best in the world. An ingenious solution, which bypassing the obstacle instead of shattering there.
Ren Zhengfei is convinced that China has all the assets to succeed in AI
But Huawei’s true strike force is not in its factories, but in its long -term vision. The company invests the colossal sum of 180 billion yuan (around 23 billion euros) in research and development each year. Importantly, a third of this budget, or 60 billion yuan, is allocated to fundamental theoretical research, “Without performance assessment”.
Ren Zhengfei speaks with a certain admiration of these “Theoretical researchers”which he describes as “Solitary”. “Their contributions are sometimes only recognized for decades, even centuries later”he insists. He quotes the example of Tu Youyou, nobelized for his work on artemisinin, or agronomists whose discoveries on a wild fruit in the 1940s are today at the base of a flourishing industry. For him, without these “Roots”the technological tree, as luxuriant as it is, will eventually fall at the first gale.
This strategic patience is a luxury that few Western companies, subject to the pressure of quarterly results, can be offered. This is perhaps where the real competitive advantage of China resides. Ren Zhengfei evokes the ability of the socialist model to build infrastructure such as TGV or dams, even “Not profitable” in the short term, because they “Pose the foundations of a developed society”. For him, artificial intelligence will follow the same logic, and China has the assets to win with an unparalleled electrical and telecommunications network, and “Hundreds of millions of young people” ready to take over. In terms of software, he says that “Thousands of open source software” will meet the needs of the whole of society in the future.
Finally, Ren Zhengfei recalls the anecdote of the American journalist Thomas Friedman, who, after having taken a TGV in China, wrote: “I just saw the future. He was not in America ”. While Washington focuses on blocking a component, Huawei and China seem busy building the whole ecosystem. For the United States Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, China would not represent a threat because of its inability to produce advanced semiconductors. He assures that it is export restrictions slow down the technological progress of China.
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