Quant hedge funds flock to Ulanqab as GPU prices triple and compute arms race intensifies
A 36Kr repost of a Yuanchuan Investment Review feature reports that Chinese quant hedge funds are moving training data centers to Ulanqab in Inner Mongolia to tap cheap wind and coal power as GPU costs surge. One quant fund manager said graphics card prices have roughly tripled over the past year, with an 8-GPU A100 server rising from about 400,000 yuan to more than 1.2 million yuan and monthly rent for such a machine climbing from 30,000–40,000 yuan to 80,000 yuan. The article also cites Bloomberg saying DeepSeek plans an approximately 1GW AI data center in Ulanqab with at least 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT chips, a claim not confirmed by DeepSeek or Huawei.
The report says Ulanqab's wind and coal power can be about 10 times cheaper than Shanghai commercial electricity, a gap quant funds say partly offsets rising GPU acquisition costs.
内蒙古中部一座盛产土豆的五线小城，突然进入了华尔街的视野。
高盛一份报告称，乌兰察布已成为亚太规模最大、增长最快的AI算力集群之一。这座火山散落的草原之城，聚满了阿里、字节、苹果一众巨头的数据中心。
据彭博消息，DeepSeek计划在乌兰察布建设一座约1GW的超大型AI数据中心，并至少部署16万颗华为昇腾950DT芯片。
就像DeepSeek本身带着复合的身份，这座热闹的城市，现在不仅模型厂扎堆，还聚集了量化私募。
除了DeepSeek/幻方，九坤、灵均等量化私募也已登陆乌兰察布。灵均是最早入驻内蒙古的私募之一，2020年就启动在乌兰察布超算中心建设，目前CPU超10万核、GPU超千张、存储容量超10PB。灵均告诉远川，乌兰察布商用电力、运营成本远低于北京。
一名量化基金经理盘算，在写字楼建机房，一个月电费8万，水费1万5，“上海7-8月的天越来越热，等规模大一些也要把机房搬到电费便宜的乌兰察布去。”
#DeepSeek#Huawei#Ascend 950DT#High-Flyer#Ubiquant#Lingjun#Envision Energy#Nvidia#UCloud#Goldman Sachs