- AI fleas repair companies thrive due to a sharp increase in demand
- GPUS Standing a booming underground repair market in the middle of American export restrictions
- Chinese stores simulate data centers and repair hundreds of chips monthly on a scale
A silent but increasing company emerged in China which focuses on the repair of the AI advanced chips of Nvidia, despite strict American export controls.
Reports of PK Press Club Found around a dozen small businesses, mainly based in Shenzhen, saying that they serve a large number of H100 and A100 GPUs from Nvidia, even if these chips were officially prohibited from sale in China in 2022.
A company told the news agency that it spreads up to 500 NVIDIA chips AI each month – and with around 12 similar companies operating all year round, which could represent tens of thousands of tokens per year.
Important demand
Many of these units are used with high use, especially since some have run 24 hours a day in IA training charges.
“There is a really important repair request”, ” PK Press Club was informed by the co -owner of a Shenzhen company which moved into AI equipment at the end of 2024.
This request led to the creation of a second company only to manage the repair of the AI chips.
Their installation includes a server room that can simulate data center conditions with up to 256 servers.
Another store that has gone from GPU rentals to repairs told PK Press Club It corrects around 200 chips per month, generally invoicing around 10% of the original purchase price.
Repairs may include the replacement of fans, fixes of the printed circuit card, memory diagnostics and software tests.
Nvidia cannot support or legally replace restricted GPUs in China. An NVIDIA spokesperson said only the company and the approved partners were authorized to offer the necessary service and support, adding that the execution of limited fleas without complete infrastructure is not viable in the long term.
The potentially high failure rate raises concerns as to what will happen to tens of thousands of aging A100s and GPU earlier once they fail.
The existence of such a repair sector is due to the widespread frame of prohibited fleas in China, which we have reported before.
While Nvidia recently started to offer the H20 GPU in China to comply with export restrictions, many customers still prefer H100 prohibited for training training.
