Huawei Surpasses Nvidia in Chinese AI Chip Market

Chinese tech giant Huawei has made significant gains in the domestic AI chip market, surpassing Nvidia's market share. According to Eric Xu, the company's rotating chairman, their Ascend line of neural processing units (NPUs) has exceeded Nvidia's sales in China. This success can be attributed to the Trump administration's export control policies, which have led to a shift towards homegrown alternatives.

The US Commerce Department initially imposed licensing requirements on Nvidia's and AMD's China-spec accelerators in April 2025 but later reversed course. By late last year, restrictions were loosened further, allowing Nvidia to sell its H200-series parts to approved Chinese customers for the first time ever.

However, this change came too late for Nvidia, as government officials had already begun pressuring bit barn operators to transition away from foreign accelerators in favor of homegrown alternatives. As a result, Huawei has filled the void and is now deploying a 256,000-card Atlas 950 SuperCluster.