China offers Alibaba and other domestic giants half-price data center energy if it picks chips from Huawei over Nvidia

• China aims to cutting energy costs to push domestic AI chip adoption
• Local governments now reward data centers running Chinese processors over imports
• Major tech firms face tough trade-offs between efficiency and political loyalty

China is reportedly offering major home-grown cloud and internet companies including Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent electricity subsidies which could reduce energy costs by as much as half.

Reports from the Financial Times claim the initiative aims to encourage these firms to run their data center operations on chips produced by local manufacturers such as Huawei and Cambricon.

By targeting large data center clusters, local authorities hope to maintain momentum in artificial intelligence development while adhering to national directives favoring domestic supply chains.