By Josh Ye

HONG KONG Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings said that it will look for domestic source for AI training chips following new U.S. chip curbs.

Martin Lau, president of Tencent, said on a call with analysts on Wednesday that the White House's decision last month to ban more AI chips from export to China will force the company to use its existing chips more efficiently and seek domestically produced AI chips.

"Going forward, we will have to figure out ways to make the usage of our AI chips more efficient," he said, "And we will also try to look for domestic source for these training chips."

Lau's remark comes at a time where Chinese companies with AI ambitions are scrambling to cope with the U.S.' ever-expanding AI chip export restriction to China.

Before such bans came into place, US semiconductor giant Nvidia has traditionally dominated the AI chip market in China. But now a growing number of Chinese tech firms are turning to homegrown chipmakers like Huawei Technologies for AI chip supply. Reuters reported last week that Tencent's rival Baidu has ordered 1,600 of Huawei's Ascend 910B chips.

(Reporting by Josh Ye; Editing by Toby Chopra)