Tech war: Biden's decree zaps lucrative investments in China's chip and AI sectors
It is most likely that China's largest chip foundry, a key piece of the puzzle in Beijing's efforts to achieve greater self-sufficiency in semiconductors, would not have been able to set up its first plant in Shanghai's suburbs in the early 2000s without funding from American investors such as Walden International and Goldman Sachs. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) is just one of many Chinese firms that received US venture capital funding from investors seeking extraordinary returns from China's economic take-off, a bold example of the marriage of domestic technological ambition with adventurous American funds. However, amid rising geopolitical tensions between the world's two biggest economies and the implementation of tough US investment curbs, prospects for such collaboration in future have dimmed, dealing a direct blow to China's ambitions to become a global power in artificial intelligence (AI). Industry insiders and analysts say the wi...