Co-founder and general manager of Biren Tech, a major Chinese GPU startup competing with Nvidia, has departed.

Gao Jiao, the Co-Founder and General Manager of Biren Tech, has left the company, according to reports from Chinese media outlets. While the exact reasons for his departure have not been detailed, the move suggests underlying challenges facing the Chinese GPU startup.

Biren Tech, based in Shanghai, secured more than 5 billion yuan ($726.6 million) in financing for its GPU initiative. The company unveiled the Biren BR100, a 77 billion transistor processor featuring a 7nm process node, along with specifications designed to rival NVIDIA's latest offerings such as the Ampere A100. The B-series GPU lineup consisted of two dies: the BR100 for the HPC and datacenter segment, and the BR104 for the entry-level server and workstation segment. Details of these processors were revealed during presentations and at HotChips 23.

The company's ambitions faced a significant setback when China implemented a complete ban on offshore manufacturing for chip production. This restriction prevented Biren from utilizing TSMC's 7nm process node, which had been central to its GPU development plans. US regulations and concerns over the competitive threat posed by these GPUs to NVIDIA and US military research further constrained the company's options. Critically, the advanced manufacturing technology required to produce the GPUs as originally promised is not available within China.

In response to these constraints, NVIDIA retrofitted its Ampere A100 and Hopper H100 GPUs to comply with export restrictions, offering them to Chinese companies as the A800 and H800 models. With these mounting pressures and an uncertain path forward, the departure of Biren's top executive suggests growing skepticism about the company's viability. However, given the substantial investment committed to the venture, Biren may continue operations, and it remains possible that a version of the B-Series GPUs could eventually emerge to compete with NVIDIA and other US technology providers.