New Delhi, May 20 -- Artificial intelligence is like a cake, says Jensen Huang, the boss of Nvidia, a chipmaker. ai applications, such as chatbots, are at the top. The next layer down is software, like the large language models (llms) on which chatbots run. Then comes hardware, the semiconductors needed to train the models. This spring China's ai firms are busy baking all of these layers. ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, has unveiled a slick new video-generation app. DeepSeek, a flashy startup, is due to release a powerful new llm. And Huawei, China's tech champion, will unveil a new ai chip.

Though these firms keep China in the ai race with America, they are not pushing it into the lead. But there is another layer of Mr Huang's cak...