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Could a diamond wafer as wide as a basketball be China’s trump card in AI race?

When Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) held its 11th group wedding for doctoral students on May 31, each of the 187 newlywed couples was presented…

By Samantha Johnson / June 16, 2026
When Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) held its 11th group wedding for doctoral students on May 31, each of the 187 newlywed couples was presented with a one-carat diamond ring, with the diamonds grown in the university’s laboratory.

The gems were developed by Zhu Jiaqi and his team from HIT’s School of Astronautics using a technology that in theory could produce high-purity, single crystal diamonds of any shape and size – from wedding jewellery to a wafer as wide as a basketball.

Known as microwave plasma chemical vapour deposition (MPCVD), the process generates carbon atoms in an ultra-clean environment, depositing them layer by layer onto a diamond seed crystal.

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As the global artificial intelligence race enters an era defined by computing power, China is emerging as a leading producer of ultra-large synthetic diamonds – increasingly viewed as critical to dissipating the heat generated by semiconductors.

With chip performance increasingly constrained by the more fundamental physical challenge of heat, a series of breakthroughs in the growing of large single-crystal diamonds could give China an unexpected advantage in next-generation AI hardware.

This picture of Zhu Yanhui (left) and Jensen Huang was posted to social media after their meeting in January in Beijing. Photo: WeChat
This picture of Zhu Yanhui (left) and Jensen Huang was posted to social media after their meeting in January in Beijing. Photo: WeChat
During a visit to Beijing in January, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang had a meeting with Zhu Yanhui, founder of Chaoying Diamond Technology, a supplier of diamond technology application materials.

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