Analysts at Bernstein have dispelled the myth of parity in the AI race. Contrary to the belief that China compensates for its chip shortages with an excess of energy, the US is leading by a wide margin in a key metric: the introduction of actual computing power. In 2025, the US and its allies plan to add over 25 zettaflops (ZFLOPS) of AI capacity, while China is projected to add less than 1 ZFLOPS.

The technology gap is enormous. China will be able to deliver around 1.5 million domestic chips, which will amount to only 0.6 ZFLOPS. Even considering the import of lower versions of Nvidia and AMD chips, the total increase will remain below one. Meanwhile, 4 million new Nvidia Blackwell chips will provide the West with an increase of 18 ZFLOPS. When accounting for other accelerators, the figure will exceed 25 ZFLOPS.

Although China is bringing in 16 times more energy capacity (>500 GW compared to 30 GW in the US), this does not translate into leadership in AI. The US is building more specialized data centers: 5.3 GW compared to 3.9 GW in China for 2024. The shortage of advanced chips limits China so significantly that even by 2030, its capacity may reach only 19 ZFLOPS—a level that the US will surpass already next year.