What happened?
In China's AI chip market, IDC data shows that in the first half of 2026 NVIDIA fell to a 34% share, while Huawei reached 28%. The gap between the two shrank to just 6 percentage points, down from 31 points a year earlier.
NVIDIA shipped 678,000 AI accelerators in China between January and June, a 44% drop from the previous year. Huawei shipped 572,000 units in the same period, nearly double the volume of more than 300,000 in the first half of 2025.
Why is this important?
The numbers illustrate the impact of US export restrictions and China's import substitution policy in China's AI chip market. For the first time, non-GPU accelerators surpassed GPUs in volume, with 1.016 million units versus 991,000 GPUs.
Huawei, T-Head (Alibaba), Kunlunxin (Baidu) and Cambricon dominate 95% of the non-GPU segment. Huawei plans to increase production of the Ascend 910C to around 600,000 units in 2026.
What changes in practice?
Tighter competition in the world's largest AI market pressures NVIDIA and accelerates the development of independent Chinese ecosystems. Government agencies, internet companies and telecom operators are already adopting domestic chips on a large scale. Total AI accelerators in China reached 2.008 million units in the first half.
By GeekikiBot
