{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-11-15T00:33:00+01:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-27-epoch-ai-chip-imports-us-72-percent/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-27-epoch-ai-chip-imports-us-72-percent/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2026-10-27-epoch-ai-chip-imports-us-72-percent","date":"2026-10-27","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Epoch AI's chip-imports data","deck":"72% of the world's AI compute since 2022 went to the US, about 10% to China; US share of new compute 78% in H1 2026","takeaway":"On Oct 27, 2026 Epoch AI published an AI Chip Imports explorer that estimates where AI chips end up from national customs records and domestic production.","category":"hardware-compute","category_label":"Chips & compute","importance":2,"confidence":"medium","status":{"key":"partly","labels":["Partly confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"Epoch AI: Data on AI chip imports","url":"https://epoch.ai/data/ai-chip-imports","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"epoch.ai"},{"n":2,"title":"Epoch AI on X: 72% of the world's AI compute has ended up in the US (Oct 27)","url":"https://x.com/EpochAIResearch/status/2115186242459767006","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"x.com"}],"official":2,"filed":"2026-10-29","updated":"2026-10-29","orgs":["Epoch AI"],"title":"Epoch AI's chip-imports data: 72% of the world's AI compute since 2022 went to the US, about 10% to China; US share of new compute 78% in H1 2026","summary":"On Oct 27, 2026 Epoch AI published an AI Chip Imports explorer that estimates where AI chips end up from national customs records and domestic production. By its estimate, 72% of the world's AI compute acquired since 2022 is in the US and about 10% in China, and the US share of new compute rose from about 60% a year in 2022-2024 to 72% in 2025 and 78% in the first half of 2026.","key_facts":["Method (Epoch): customs statistics from over a dozen national sources; the AI-attributable slice of server and GPU-board imports above a non-AI 2021 baseline; re-exports netted out so each chip counts once in its final country; breakdowns by chip designer and type (H100-equivalents, units, trade value); data under CC BY","Findings (@EpochAIResearch, Oct 27, ~75k views): since 2022, 72% of AI compute in the US, ~10% in China; US share of new compute ~60% a year 2022-2024, 72% in 2025, 78% in H1 2026","Part of Epoch's AI chip supply-chain project, alongside data on chip components, sales, owners and users","Estimates, not inventories: the page combines customs records with domestic production data; smuggled hardware does not appear in customs records (our caveat; see the Malaysia seizures entry)"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["compute","chips","geopolitics","us-china","data","epoch-ai","export-controls"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nEpoch AI added a country-level estimate of AI chip deployment built from public trade data to its chip supply-chain datasets.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nIt quantifies how concentrated frontier compute has become in one country, and that the concentration is still increasing, which\nunderlies both US export-control policy and other countries' sovereign-compute plans.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2026-10-28-malaysia-seizes-ai-servers-klia-transit-syndicate","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-28-malaysia-seizes-ai-servers-klia-transit-syndicate/","date":"2026-10-28","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Malaysia seizes 30 more AI-chip servers (~$12M) at Kuala Lumpur airport, says a syndicate is using it as a transit point","deck":null,"takeaway":"Southeast Asian transit hubs remain the main route for diverting export-controlled AI hardware, and enforcement there is now producing repeated seizures rather than one-off cases.","category":"hardware-compute","category_label":"Chips & compute","importance":2,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":3,"official":0,"filed":"2026-10-28","updated":"2026-10-28","orgs":["Royal Malaysian Customs Department"]},{"id":"2026-10-02-epoch-ai-agent-population-estimate","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-02-epoch-ai-agent-population-estimate/","date":"2026-10-02","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Epoch AI: chips shipped through 2027 could run 33–171 million frontier-model agents at once","deck":null,"takeaway":"On Oct 2, 2026 Epoch AI's Jason Li estimated how many AI agents the world's AI hardware could run.","category":"research","category_label":"Research","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":2,"official":2,"filed":"2026-10-13","updated":"2026-10-17","orgs":["Epoch AI"]}],"people":[],"posts":[{"id":"x-epochairesearch-2115186242459767006","title":"“Since 2022, 72% of the world’s AI compute has ended up in the US and about 10% in China.…”","url":"https://postcutoff.com/p/x-epochairesearch-2115186242459767006/"}],"videos":[],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-10-29","type":"filed","text":"Created (news agent)"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-10-29","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-10-29","human_review":null,"version":{"date":"2026-10-29"}},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":180,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":119,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"gemini-4-hydrogen","name":"Gemini 4 Hydrogen","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":210,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":149,"in_training_data":false}],"short_url":null}