Chinese technology company Tencent has launched three new microchips as it turns its focus to alleviating the global semiconductor shortage.
Tencent’s chip launch comes as China bolsters its domestic chip industry, making it a strategic priority for the country’s technology sector.
Tencent, one of the world’s largest gaming companies and the operator of China’s most popular messaging service "WeChat," has been investing in areas including chips and cloud computing to diversify its business.
One of the new semiconductors is an artificial intelligence chip called "Zixiao." The chip is able to process images, video and natural language, which could be used for artificial intelligence voice assistants that rely on the ability for computers to understand and process human language.
The second chip is a video transcoding chip. These are required to convert videos into different formats.
And the third chip is a so-called "network card" that’s designed to help cloud computing processes.
China’s technology giants have all been pouring money into semiconductors in recent months.
In August, Baidu launched its second-generation artificial intelligence chip. Last month, Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) released a chip designed for servers and cloud computing.
However, Chinese companies are only designing their own chips. Manufacturing and other parts of the supply chain still rely heavily on foreign companies, which is a challenge to China’s domestic economy.
