(Yicai Global) July 25 -- Viewshine Intelligent Meter’s shares fell after the Chinese smart meter supplier said it is allying with a chip design firm to build an artificial intelligence computing power services center at a cost of CNY3 billion (USD420 million).

Viewshine [SHE: 002849] closed down 5.2 percent at CNY16.30 (USD2.29) today, after opening up 8.5 percent. The wider Shenzhen market climbed 2.5 percent.

Viewshine will set up a joint venture with Moore Thread Intelligent Technology Beijing to build the more than 2,000 petaflops center in the Guian New Area of Guizhou province, the Hangzhou-based company said yesterday, citing the investment deal signed with the area’s management committee. Viewshine will own 86 percent of the JV.

The center, to be built in three phases, will focus on creating an industrial ecology around graphics processing unit chips and provide computing power for AI model training and reasoning application scenarios.

The project’s first phase will have investment of CNY500 million (USD69.5 million) and computing power of 370 Pflops, Viewshine added. It will sell AI computing power to clients for CNY37,500 (USD5,212) per PFlops a month and is expected to gross CNY167 million in annual output value and generate CNY110 million in annual net profit.

The second phase will have investment of CNY1 billion, and the third CNY1.5 billion, the company said, without revealing any further details about these two phases.

The new center will help Viewshine explore business opportunities in AI generated content and general computing power and form a synergy with its existing digital technology development and application of smart meter businesses, the firm noted.

Editor: Futura Costaglione