FlagOS 2.0 Makes China's Chip Fragmentation Someone Else's Problem

Export controls on AI chips rest on a specific theory of leverage: that whoever sells the silicon controls what gets built. FlagOS 2.0 is a direct engineering argument against that theory. By unifying development across 32 chips from 18 manufacturers under a single software layer, BAAI has made the chip vendor a replaceable component rather than a gatekeeping dependency. The 23-institution coalition behind the release — spanning Tsinghua, Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and major domestic chip makers — signals this is not a research prototype. It is…