- Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) chip unit T-Head and Alipay, the payment service under Alibaba's financial affiliate Ant Group, prepared to launch computing chips for secure payments based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture.
- Alibaba unveiled the chip at its first "Xuantie RISC-V Developer Ecosystem Conference," Reuters reports.
- They proposed to embed the chip in hardware devices and enhance mobile payments, which are popular in China via QR codes.
- Chinese companies invested heavily in chips amid U.S. export restrictions targeting China's semiconductor sector.
- Alipay spokesperson said they would collaborate with other chip-design companies to produce the chips.
- T-Head, a unit under Alibaba's cloud computing division, first unveiled its Xuantie series of RISC-V-based core processors in 2019.
- Alibaba is one of several Chinese tech companies to invest in RISC-V, an alternate chip architecture. The dominant architecture for most mobile computing chips is from Softbank Group Corp (OTC:SFTBF) (OTC:SFTBY) Arm Ltd.
- The open-source nature of RISC-V's design, in theory, makes it less susceptible to export restrictions.
- In 2019, Washington imposed export restrictions on China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd.
- In late 2022, the U.S. launched similar export restrictions on Chinese chip fabs and research labs, triggering enthusiasm for RISC-V in China.
- As of November, Alibaba proposed to power 20% of its operations with its homebrew CPUs by 2025.
- Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 1.30% at $88.79 on the last check Thursday.
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