(Yicai Global) April 7 -- Shares of ZTE surged after the Chinese telecoms equipment provider said it will debut a graphics processing unit server that can be used to train OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT by December.

ZTE's stock price [SHE: 000063] jumped as much as 10 percent to CNY37 (USD5.40) intraday as of 3 p.m. Its Hong Kong-listed shares [HKG: 0763] were paused due to Good Friday.

The company will debut devices that support large language model training, such as artificial intelligence servers, high-performance switches, and GPUs by year-end, online news outlet The Paper reported, citing Xu Ziyang, president of the Shenzhen-based firm, who was talking during an earnings briefing yesterday.

ZTE has already started investing in the GPU server project by leveraging its advantages to improve the research and development efficiency of itself and that of its clients, Xu said. "In addition to strong computing power, the bandwidth should also be sufficient." In terms of software, the firm will integrate these capabilities into its digital information solutions, he added.

ZTE will also independently develop an AI accelerator chip to reduce processing costs, Xu said, adding that the firm intends to work with partners to integrate large language models with key production capacity. The phonemaker has already teamed up with Baidu which started testing its ChatGPT-like Ernie Bot last month with select members of the public. The pair said that ZTE’s servers will support Ernie Bot to advance AI applications.

Last year, ZTE recorded a nearly 19 percent increase in net profit to about CNY8.1 billion (USD1.2 billion) from 2021, according to the earnings report. Its revenue climbed by 7 percent to around CNY123 billion (USD17.9 billion).

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi