Huawei Unveils AI Chip Plans Amid Nvidia Challenge

Huawei Technologies is planning to launch two new artificial-intelligence semiconductors in 2027, as part of its effort to challenge US chipmaker Nvidia. The company's rotating chairman David Wang made the announcement at a conference in Shanghai.

The new chips, called the 960DT and the Ascend 960PR, are set to be launched in the first and third quarters of 2027 respectively. Huawei is also working on a technology that will enable multiple AI chips to work together as one system, providing more processing power than a single chip can.

The company's UnifiedBus technology will play a key role in this effort, allowing chips to share information and work together efficiently. Huawei has developed 11 semiconductors based on this technology for use in large systems, which the company calls superclusters. These systems can support up to 1 million AI processors.

Huawei has shipped over 1,000 smaller linked systems, called supernodes, to more than 370 customers. A supernode is a system that brings together many AI chips to tackle a single task. The company's AI chip ecosystem has attracted 5,270 monthly active developers.