Huawei's Ascend 910D AI Chip Challenges NVIDIA Amid US Export Restrictions

Chinese companies stockpiled billions of dollars worth of Nvidia H20 GPUs prior to recent ban

China's top three internet companies reportedly stockpiled billions of dollars worth of Nvidia H20 GPUs before the U.S. export restrictions went into effect in April. Nikkei Asia reports that ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent anticipated the likelihood of an export ban on the China-specific H20 last year, and have since been snapping up as many H20 GPUs as they can get their hands on. The three companies have reportedly accumulated around 1 million H20s -- or about a full year's supply. While that is a significant number of GPUs, the companies' full supply was cut short by a month, as they requested that Nvidia ship them their fully-requested volume of H20s by the end of May. If all three companies managed to get their hands on all the H20s they requested, the total value would exceed $12 billion. High demand for computing power is apparently the main reason for the companies' stockpiling: Tencent's integration of DeepSeek into WeChat is a huge contributor to China's demand for computing power. The Nvidia H20 will serve as a stop-gap solution for Chinese companies until homegrown AI GPUs are able to provide similar -- or better -- performance. Huawei is reportedly working on a new Ascend GPU claimed to rival the performance of Nvidia's GB200, which would give China the same AI computing capabilities as Western countries. Starting in April, the U.S government banned the exportation of Nvidia's H20 HGX AI GPU designed for the Chinese market. The government cited the GPU's memory and interconnect bandwidth, as well as its potential use in supercomputers, as reasons for the ban. The new restriction will force Nvidia to take a massive $5.5 billion financial hit, as it can no longer sell its existing inventory of H20 GPUs to China. The H20 is a cut-down variant of the H100 -- Nvidia's predecessor to the current HGX B200. Similar to the RTX 5090D and RTX 4090D, the H20 is a datacenter GPU tailor-made to comply with the U.S government's export sanctions to China, featuring dramatically reduced AI and HPC performance compared to its bigger brother.

China's Huawei develops new AI chip, seeking to match Nvidia, WSJ reports

April 27 (Reuters) - China's Huawei Technologies is preparing to test its newest and most powerful artificial-intelligence processor, hoping to replace some higher-end products of U.S. chip giant Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. Huawei has approached some Chinese tech companies about testing the technical feasibility of the new chip, called the Ascend 910D, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. The Chinese company hopes that the latest iteration of its Ascend AI processors will be more powerful than Nvidia's H100, and is slated to receive the first batch of samples of the processor as early as late May, the report added. Reuters reported on Monday that Huawei plans to begin mass shipments of its advanced 910C artificial intelligence chip to Chinese customers as early as next month. Huawei and its Chinese peers have struggled for years to match Nvidia in building top-end chips that could compete with the U.S. firm's products for training models, a process where data is fed to algorithms to help them learn to make accurate decisions. Seeking to limit China's technological development, particularly advances for its military, Washington has cut China off from Nvidia's most advanced AI products, including its flagship B200 chip. The H100 chip, for example, was banned from sale in China in 2022 by U.S. authorities before it was even launched. Nvidia declined to comment while Huawei did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Reporting by Pretish M J in Bengaluru; Editing by David Evans and Mark Porter Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:China

Banned from China, NVIDIA loses ground to Huawei's next-gen AI chip

Sources familiar with the matter say Huawei has already made some initial shipments of the 910C, positioning itself as the key domestic alternative amid tightening U.S. trade restrictions. The 910C chip builds on Huawei's existing Ascend 910B, but with a significant architectural upgrade. By packaging two 910B processors together using advanced integration techniques, Huawei has managed to double the chip's computing power and memory capacity. It achieves performance comparable to NVIDIA's H100 chip by combining two 910B processors into a single package through advanced integration techniques, one source familiar with the design said to Reuters. In addition to its raw power, the 910C brings incremental improvements like better support for a wide range of AI workloads. While not a breakthrough on the scale of brand-new chip architectures, the 910C offers enough performance to satisfy Chinese firms in need of reliable, high-performance hardware for training and inference tasks. The shift comes at a pivotal moment. In early April, the Trump administration informed NVIDIA that the H20 -- a China-specific version of its H100 -- would now require an export license, effectively barring its sale.

Huawei Prepares to Ship New AI Chips Amid Restrictions on China | AIM Media House

This development comes as Chinese AI firms seek domestic alternatives to NVIDIA's H20 chip. Huawei, the Chinese tech company, is set to commence mass shipments of its Ascend 910C AI chip to Chinese customers as early as May, according to a report by Reuters. This development comes as Chinese AI firms seek domestic alternatives to NVIDIA's H20 chip, which has recently become subject to US export licensing requirements. The Ascend 910C is an upgraded graphics processing unit (GPU) that combines two 910B processors into a single package, effectively doubling computing power and memory capacity. Last week, NVIDIA announced in an exchange filing that the US government has potentially charged NVIDIA $5.5 billion for exporting H20 AI chips to China, one of its key markets, without a license. In October last, there were reports that ByteDance, the Chinese tech company that owns TikTok, significantly changed its approach to AI hardware by using Huawei chips to train its latest AI model. While not a technological breakthrough, the 910C offers performance comparable to the H100 chip, which was banned from sale in China in 2022 by US authorities. Huawei has already distributed samples and is accepting orders, though the company has not publicly confirmed shipment details. Last year, 01.AI chief Kai-Fu Lee said, "We were six or seven years behind." But now, China seems to be ahead of the US. The chip is manufactured by China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) using its N+2 7nm process technology, despite low yield rates. Some 910C units reportedly use chips originally made by Taiwan's TSMC for Sophgo, prompting a U.S. investigation. Last month, the Chinese embassy in the US even said in a post on X that US President Donald Trump's imposition of new tariffs on Chinese imports will not affect China. "If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we're ready to fight till the end." With US restrictions limiting access to NVIDIA's advanced AI products, Huawei's 910C is anticipated to become the primary hardware platform for China's AI development and deployment efforts.

Huawei's next-gen Ascend 910D AI GPU teased: rivals NVIDIA's previous-gen Hopper H100 in China

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you. Huawei is working on its next-gen Ascend 910D AI GPU, which is said to offer AI performance matching NVIDIA's previous-gen Hopper H100 AI GPU for the Chinese market. In a new report from Bloomberg, we're learning that Huawei's new Ascend 910D AI chip will have its first batch of samples out in late May, with development "still at an early stage". Huawei hopes that its new Ascend 910D will be more powerful than NVIDIA's previous-gen Hopper H100, which was released in 2022, and has been succeeded by Blackwell B200, and soon B300 and B300 Ultra AI GPUs. NVIDIA's custom made-for-China H20 AI GPU was recently banned from being sold in China with new US export restrictions, with the company taking a $5.5 billion hit on its Q1 2025 revenue because of it. China can't get its hands on even lower-end AI GPUs, so it is having to rely on homegrown solutions, with Huawei and its new Ascend 910D. It's expected that Huawei will ship over 800,000 of its Ascend 910B and 910C AI chips to customers this year, including state-owned telecommunications carriers and private AI developers including TikTok parent company ByteDance. China is many years behind the US -- and mostly NVIDIA right now with its marketing-dominating AI GPUs -- as the company has been blocked from the world's largest semiconductor foundry, TSMC. It has its own Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMI), but that company is blocked from being able to purchase the most advanced chip-making machines like ASML's family of High-NA EUV lithography machines that TSMC and Intel have been spending billions and billions of dollars on over the years.

China-based Huawei to test AI chip aiming to rival Nvidia: Report

The Wall Street Journal reports Huawei has approached Chinese tech firms to test its latest AI chip, the Ascend 910D. Chinese tech giant Huawei has reportedly developed a powerful artificial intelligence chip that could rival high-end processors from US chip maker Nvidia. The Shenzhen-based Huawei is poised to start testing a new AI chip called the Ascend 910D, and has approached local tech firms, which are slated to receive the first batch of sample chips by late May, The Wall Street Journal reported on April 27, citing people familiar with the matter. The development is still at an early stage, and a series of tests will be needed to assess the chip's performance and get it ready for customers. Huawei is pinning hopes on its latest Ascend AI processor being more powerful than Nvidia's H100 chip, which was used for AI training in 2022. Huawei is also poised to ship more than 800,000 earlier model Ascend 910B and 910C chips to customers, including state-owned telecoms operators and private AI developers such as TikTok parent ByteDance. Beijing has also reportedly encouraged Chinese AI developers to increase purchases of domestic chips as trade tensions between China and the US escalate. In mid-April, Nvidia stated that it was expecting around $5.5 billion in charges associated with its AI chip inventory due to significant export restrictions imposed by the US government affecting its business with China. The Trump administration added Nvidia's H20 chip, its most powerful processor that could be sold to China, to a growing list of semiconductors restricted for sale to the country. Some key components for AI chips, such as the latest high-bandwidth memory units, have also been restricted for export to China by the US. Huawei is focusing on building more efficient and faster systems, such as CloudMatrix 384, a computing system unveiled in April, connecting Ascend 910C chips. This would leverage their chip arrays and use brute force rather than making individual processors more powerful. Reuters reported on April 26, citing state media reports, that Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged "self-reliance and self-strengthening" to develop AI in the country. "We must recognise the gaps and redouble our efforts to comprehensively advance technological innovation, industrial development, and AI-empowered applications," Xi said at a Politburo meeting study session on April 25. Related: US Senate bill threatens crypto, AI data centers with fees -- Report "We must continue to strengthen basic research, concentrate our efforts on mastering core technologies such as high-end chips and basic software, and build an independent, controllable, and collaborative artificial intelligence basic software and hardware system," Xi added. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged Xi to contact him for discussions about a potential trade deal after his administration imposed 145% tariffs on most Chinese goods. China has stated that it is not having any talks with the US and that the country should "stop creating confusion."

Huawei Said to be Readying New AI Chip for Mass Shipment

Some of Huawei's 910C GPUs use semiconductors that were made by TSMC Huawei Technologies plans to begin mass shipments of its advanced 910C artificial intelligence chip to Chinese customers as early as next month, two people familiar with the matter said. Some shipments have already been made, they added. The timing is fortuitous for Chinese AI companies which have been left scrambling for domestic alternatives to the H20, the primary AI chip that Nvidia had until recently been allowed to sell freely in the Chinese market. This month, US President Donald Trump's administration told Nvidia that sales of the H20 would require an export licence. Huawei's 910C, a graphics processing unit (GPU), represents an architectural evolution rather than a technological breakthrough, according to one of the two people and a third source familiar with its design. It achieves performance comparable to Nvidia's H100 chip by combining two 910B processors into a single package through advanced integration techniques, they said. That means it has double the computing power and memory capacity of the 910B and it also has incremental improvements, including enhanced support for diverse AI workload data, they added. All sources were not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified. Huawei declined to comment on what it called speculation about shipment plans for the 910C and its capabilities. Seeking to limit China's technological development, particularly advances for its military, Washington has cut China off from Nvidia's most advanced AI products including its flagship B200 chip. The H100 chip, for example, was banned from sale in China in 2022 by US authorities before it was even launched. This has allowed Huawei and Chinese GPU startups such as Moore Threads and Iluvatar CoreX to go after what has primarily been a market dominated by Nvidia. The US Commerce Department's latest export curbs on Nvidia's H20 "will mean that Huawei's Ascend 910C GPU will now become the hardware of choice for (Chinese) AI model developers and for deploying inference capacity," said Paul Triolo, a partner at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge Group. Late last year, Huawei distributed samples of the 910C to several technology firms and started accepting orders, sources have said. Reuters was not able to ascertain which companies would be primarily producing the 910C. China's SMIC is manufacturing some main components of the GPUs using its N+2 7nm process technology although its chip yield rates are low, a source has previously said. At least some of Huawei's 910C GPUs use semiconductors that were made by TSMC for China-based Sophgo, according to one of the sources and a fourth person. The Commerce Department has been investigating work done by the Taiwanese contract chip manufacturing giant for Sophgo after one of its TSMC-made chips was found in a 910B processor. TSMC made nearly three million chips in recent years that matched the design ordered by Sophgo, according to Lennart Heim, a researcher at RAND's Technology and Security and Policy Center in Arlington, Virginia, who is tracking Chinese developments in AI. Huawei reiterated that it has not used TSMC-made Sophgo chips. Sophgo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. TSMC said it complies with regulatory requirements and it has not supplied Huawei since mid-September 2020. © Thomson Reuters 2025

Huawei readies new AI chip for mass shipment as China seeks Nvidia alternatives, sources say

Huawei Technologies plans to begin mass shipments of its advanced 910C artificial intelligence chip to Chinese customers as early as next month, two people familiar with the matter said. Some shipments have already been made, they added. The timing is fortuitous for Chinese AI companies which have been left scrambling for domestic alternatives to the H20, the primary AI chip that Nvidia had until recently been allowed to sell freely in the Chinese market. This month, US president Donald Trump's administration told Nvidia that sales of the H20 would require an export licence. Huawei's 910C, a graphics processing unit (GPU), represents an architectural evolution rather than a technological breakthrough, according to one of the two people and a third source familiar with its design. It achieves performance comparable to Nvidia's H100 chip by combining two 910B processors into a single package through advanced integration techniques, they said. That means it has double the computing power and memory capacity of the 910B and it also has incremental improvements, including enhanced support for diverse AI workload data, they added. All sources were not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified. Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Seeking to limit China's technological development, particularly advances for its military, Washington has cut China off from Nvidia's most advanced AI products including its flagship B200 chip. The H100 chip, for example, was banned from sale in China in 2022 by U.S. authorities before it was even launched. This has allowed Huawei and Chinese GPU startups such as Moore Threads and Iluvatar CoreX to go after what has primarily been a market dominated by Nvidia. The U.S. Commerce Department's latest export curbs on Nvidia's H20 "will mean that Huawei's Ascend 910C GPU will now become the hardware of choice for (Chinese) AI model developers and for deploying inference capacity," said Paul Triolo, a partner at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge Group. Late last year, Huawei distributed samples of the 910C to several technology firms and started accepting orders, sources have said. Reuters was not able to ascertain which companies would be primarily producing the 910C. China's SMIC is manufacturing some main components of the GPUs using its N+2 7nm process technology although its chip yield rates are low, a source has previously said. At least some of Huawei's 910Cs use chips that were made by Taiwanese contract chip manufacturing giant TSMC for China-based Sophgo, according to one of the sources and a fourth person. The Commerce Department has been investigating TSMC's work for Sophgo after one of its TSMC-made chips was found in a 910B processor. TSMC made nearly three million chips in recent years that matched the design ordered by Sophgo, according to Lennart Heim, a researcher at RAND's Technology and Security and Policy Center in Arlington, Virginia, who is tracking Chinese developments in AI. Sophgo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. TSMC said it complies with regulatory requirements and it has not supplied Huawei since mid-September 2020. (Reporting by Fanny Potkin, Che Pan and Brenda Goh; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

Nvidia vs Huawei: China firm is testing AI processor to replace USA artificial-intelligence giant

Huawei and its Chinese peers have struggled for years to match Nvidia. Huawei has approached some Chinese tech companies about testing the technical feasibility of the new chip, called the Ascend 910D.Artificial-intelligence (AI) race between the US and China is heating up and it's time for Nvidia and Huawei Technologies to battle it out. Huawei Technologies is preparing to test its newest and most powerful artificial-intelligence processor, hoping to replace some higher-end products of U.S. chip giant Nvidia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter, as per a Reuters report. Huawei has approached some Chinese tech companies about testing the technical feasibility of the new chip, called the Ascend 910D, the Reuters report said, citing people familiar with the matter. The Chinese company hopes that the latest iteration of its Ascend AI processors will be more powerful than Nvidia's H100, and is slated to receive the first batch of samples of the processor as early as late May, the report added. Reuters reported on Monday that Huawei plans to begin mass shipments of its advanced 910C artificial intelligence chip to Chinese customers as early as next month. Huawei and its Chinese peers have struggled for years to match Nvidia in building top-end chips that could compete with the U.S. firm's products for training models, a process where data is fed to algorithms to help them learn to make accurate decisions. Seeking to limit China's technological development, particularly advances for its military, Washington has cut China off from Nvidia's most advanced AI products, including its flagship B200 chip. The H100 chip, for example, was banned from sale in China in 2022 by U.S. authorities before it was even launched. Q1. What is full form of AI? A1. The full form AI is Artificial-intelligence. Q2. What is Huawei's new chip? A2. Huawei has approached some Chinese tech companies about testing the technical feasibility of the new chip, called the Ascend 910D.

Chinese Tech Giants Ordered More Than $12 Billion Of NVIDIA's H20 AI Chips Ahead Of Sanctions - Report

According to a report from the Nikkei, Chinese technology giants Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance had placed billions of dollars of orders for NVIDIA's H20 GPUs ahead of the US restrictions on the chips announced earlier this month. The H20 is the latest NVIDIA chip to be sanctioned by the US government, but Nikkei's sources report that Chinese firms had expected the restriction as early as last year and had prepared beforehand. As per one source, the total value of Chinese orders placed with NVIDIA exceeded $12 billion, with billions of dollars of the chips shipped to China before the restrictions cut off supply in April. Reports of turmoil in the H20 supply chain had started to surface in late March, when a Chinese server company purportedly warned customers of a shortage of the GPUs. This shortage was expected to last beyond April 20, and according to the Nikkei, it might have been the result of over-ordering by major Chinese technology companies including ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba due to potential US sanctions on the chips. The publication's sources reveal that the three Chinese firms had ordered one million H20 GPUs ahead of US sanctions. Combined with the fact that Chinese tech giant Huawei is believed to be able to produce at least 750,000 of its Ascend A10C AI GPUs, the country has managed to stockpile a large amount of chips before the blanket US sanctions on the products. However, while the Chinese companies did place orders for a million chips, it's unclear whether all of the orders were fulfilled. According to the details, Chinese firms have placed more than $12 billion dollars of H20 AI GPU orders since last year, with multiple billions of dollars of orders having been shipped to the country. While the precise figure remains unclear, the sources add that the Trump administration's H20 export license requirements introduced earlier this month meant that Huawei, Tencent and ByteDance's plan of stockpiling a year's worth of AI GPUs fell short. While Chinese firms cannot directly purchase some advanced AI GPUs, they have tried to do so by setting up global subsidiaries to order the chips. Taiwan's leading contract chip manufacturer, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has confirmed that it is working with the US Commerce Department to trace orders that might have originated from suspicious Chinese entities. The latest orders of H20 GPUs add to the stockpile of advanced chips that Chinese firms have procured. Earlier in the year, it was reported that China's Huawei had managed to source chip dies that could enable it to manufacture as much as 1 million Ascend 910C AI GPUs provided a flawless assembly process. Huawei acquired these dies were acquired before the first Trump administration's sanctions came into effect in September 2020. However, their manufacturing process is significantly behind that of the latest chips manufactured by TSMC, which rely on advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) chip manufacturing tools.

China's Big Tech Firms Hoard Nvidia AI Chips Before Latest US Sanctions - NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Chinese internet companies, including ByteDance, Alibaba Group Holding BABA, and Tencent Holding TCEHY, hoarded billions of dollars worth of Nvidia Corp NVDA H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips as the U.S. semiconductor sanctions kicked in. Nvidia tailor-made the H20 chips to comply with U.S. semiconductor sanctions. However, the Chinese companies started hoarding them in 2024, fearing potential shipment restrictions, Nikkei Asia reported on Wednesday. Also Read: Nvidia's Jensen Huang Meets Japanese PM To Discuss AI's Growing Energy Needs They aimed to snap up 1 million H20s before the latest U.S. semiconductor sanctions. The companies reportedly placed over $16 billion in orders for the quarter. According to the report, Nvidia bagged $18 billion of H20 orders since 2025 beginning. China generated $17 billion in revenue in fiscal 2024, accounting for 13% of Nvidia's total sales. In March, Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai told CNBC that AI's total addressable market is at least $10 trillion. Alibaba was among the first major global tech companies to open-source its large-scale AI models. Over the next three years, Alibaba earmarked $53 billion for cloud and AI infrastructure. Alibaba, also known as China's tech barometer, surged over 36% year-to-date, fueled by optimism over additional domestic government stimulus and the popularity of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's promises of affordable AI models topping OpenAI and peers. Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities called Alibaba the "best way to play China tech," citing its strong positioning in AI and cloud. Following the H20 effective shipment ban to China on April 15, Nvidia stock has declined 14%, versus the PHLX Semiconductor Sector's 8% and the S&P 500's 4%. BofA Securities analyst Vivek Arya noted China and H20 exposure as generally de-risked and expected Nvidia's gross margins to typically improve throughout the fiscal second half as Blackwell gains scale and Blackwell Ultra ramps up. Although the upcoming AI Diffusion Rule remains Nvidia's most significant near-term risk, Arya reiterated a Buy rating on Nvidia, citing the current stock volatility as an enhanced buying opportunity. Price Actions: NVDA stock is up 3.34% at $102.19 at the last check on Wednesday. Read Next: Alibaba, EV Stocks Jump As U.S.-China Tensions Cool -- But Europe Still A Wild Card Photo by Hepha1st0s via Shutterstock NVDANVIDIA Corp$102.473.63%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum53.85Growth94.77Quality97.29Value7.95Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewBABAAlibaba Group Holding Ltd$119.152.82%TCEHYTencent Holdings Ltd$61.412.18%Got Questions? AskWhich Chinese tech firms will benefit from AI chip hoarding?How will Alibaba's investments in AI pay off?What impact will Nvidia's sanctions have on its stock?Are semiconductor ETFs worth exploring now?How will Tencent navigate chip supply challenges?Could AI startups see increased funding amidst tech hoarding?Which cloud infrastructure stocks could gain from Alibaba's spending?Is now a good time to invest in Nvidia given the volatility?How might consumer demand shift with AI advancements?What trends in AI technology could influence future investments?Powered ByMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Nvidia Chip Ban Won't Stop China's AI Momentum, Say Analysts -- Blocking H20 Would Hand Market To Huawei Amid Trump-Era Export Crackdown - NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Banning Nvidia Corp. NVDA chips won't stop China's artificial intelligence development, according to Bernstein analysts, who suggest the export restrictions could instead strengthen domestic competitors like Huawei Technologies. What Happened: "Banning the H20 would make no sense as its performance is already well below Chinese alternatives; a ban would simply hand the Chinese AI market completely over to Huawei," Bernstein analysts wrote Wednesday, reported Business Insider. The President Donald Trump administration is expected to require licenses for exporting powerful AI semiconductors to China, effectively creating an export ban, Nvidia disclosed in a regulatory filing last week. The company anticipates a $5.5 billion charge related to inventory and purchase commitments for its H20 chip in the first quarter ending April 27. Chinese companies have been reducing dependence on Nvidia by training models on unrestricted edge devices like personal computers and connecting Huawei chips with Nvidia processors. According to Bernstein's channel checks, "most companies are able to carry on without H20 chips." See Also: Tesla Q1 Misses Estimates As Tariff Pressures Weigh On Outlook, Lower-Cost EVs Still On Track Why It Matters: Huawei is reportedly preparing mass shipments of its advanced 910C AI chip as early as next month. The chip reportedly matches Nvidia's H100 performance by integrating two 910B processors into a single package, according to Reuters. Huawei has doubled the yield rate of its AI chips from about 20% a year ago to approximately 40% now, making its Ascend chip production profitable for the first time, the Financial Times reported. The company aims to reach the industry standard of 60% yield. Chinese AI companies focused on foundation model subscriptions face the biggest challenge transitioning from Nvidia's proprietary CUDA software. Bernstein noted one Chinese company required 200 engineers and six months to migrate to Huawei chips, achieving only 90% of previous performance. Read Next: Warren Buffett's Son Cashed In $90K Instead of Waiting on $500 Million -- Now He's Using 'Buffett Bucks' to Build His Own Dream Town in New York Image Via Shutterstock Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. NVDANVIDIA Corp$102.503.65%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum53.85Growth94.77Quality97.29Value7.95Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewGot Questions? AskHow will Huawei Technologies reshape the AI chip market?Which companies might benefit from Huawei's advanced chips?What impact will the Nvidia ban have on Chinese tech companies?Could AI start-ups in China thrive post-ban?Which U.S. chip makers may gain from Nvidia's challenges?How will the export restrictions affect global semiconductor supply chains?What investment opportunities arise from China's AI growth?Which funds are poised to benefit from AI advancements in China?How might software firms adapt to Huawei's technology?What role will edge devices play in China's AI strategy?Powered ByMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Huawei's "Next-Gen" Ascend 910D Chip To Disrupt NVIDIA's Position In Chinese AI Markets; Set To Rival Against Hopper H100

Huawei's next-gen Ascend 910D AI chip has surfaced in supply chains, as the Chinese giant is set to replace NVIDIA as the dominant player in the domestic AI industry. Well, it seems like Team Green isn't having a great time at all in China's AI markets, given that not only is the firm subjected to new export restrictions, but its competitors, notably Huawei, are ramping up the competition with new and advanced AI solutions. Now, in a report by the Wall Street Journal, it is disclosed that Huawei is now in the testing phase of their next-gen Ascend 910D AI chip, and that domestic firms are set to receive samples by late May, showing that the firm won't stop at all when it comes to conquering the local AI markets. While details about Ascend 910D are uncertain, the report claims that the chip will be more powerful than NVIDIA's Hopper generation H100 AI accelerators, which were a favorite of the Chinese AI industry back when the hype started. It is claimed that Huawei's Ascend 910C chip didn't manage to deliver to the expectations of the Chinese industry at all, since it was claimed to be a rival of NVIDIA's H100, but only managed to compete against the more cut-down H20 AI GPU, which is still a massive achievement. Huawei isn't just making strides in the standalone AI GPU segment; the company has been developing capable AI clusters that compete with modern-day counterparts from NVIDIA. We reported previously that the firm had developed the CloudMatrix 384 AI cluster, featuring Ascend AI chips and performance comparable to NVIDIA's GB200 NVL72 "Blackwell" AI server, by simply prioritizing performance over efficiency. This shows that Huawei isn't far away when it comes to technological superiority relative to its Western counterparts. The only major problem Huawei faces right now is getting the essentials, since the supply chain is pretty confined for them. The Chinese tech giant currently relies on chips from SMIC and TSMC (which were sourced before the export restrictions), but due to having a low supply, the company cannot capitalize on the demand entirely. Apart from this, Huawei needs to rely on old technologies like HBM2, which means that it needs to rely on other methods to source more power, including ignoring perf/watt figures.

Huawei readies new AI chip for mass shipment

This month, US President Donald Trump's administration told Nvidia that sales of the H20 would require an export license. Huawei Technologies HWT.UL plans to begin mass shipments of its advanced 910C artificial intelligence chip to Chinese customers as early as next month, two people familiar with the matter said. Some shipments have already been made, they added. The timing is fortuitous for Chinese AI companies which have been left scrambling for domestic alternatives to the H20, the primary AI chip that Nvidia NVDA.O had until recently been allowed to sell freely in the Chinese market. This month, US President Donald Trump's administration told Nvidia that sales of the H20 would require an export license. Huawei's 910C, a graphics processing unit (GPU), represents an architectural evolution rather than a technological breakthrough, according to one of the two people and a third source familiar with its design. It achieves performance comparable to Nvidia's H100 chip by combining two 910B processors into a single package through advanced integration techniques, they said. That means it has double the computing power and memory capacity of the 910B and it also has incremental improvements, including enhanced support for diverse AI workload data, they added. All sources were not authorized to speak to media and declined to be identified. Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Seeking to limit China's technological development, particularly advances for its military, Washington has cut China off from Nvidia's most advanced AI products including its flagship B200 chip. Advertisement The H100 chip, for example, was banned from sale in China in 2022 by US authorities before it was even launched. This has allowed Huawei and Chinese GPU startups such as Moore Threads and Iluvatar CoreX to go after what has primarily been a market dominated by Nvidia. The U.S. Commerce Department's latest export curbs on Nvidia's H20 "will mean that Huawei's Ascend 910C GPU will now become the hardware of choice for (Chinese) AI model developers and for deploying inference capacity," said Paul Triolo, a partner at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge Group. Late last year, Huawei distributed samples of the 910C to several technology firms and started accepting orders, sources have said. Reuters was not able to ascertain which companies would be primarily producing the 910C. China's SMIC 0981.HK is manufacturing some main components of the GPUs using its N+2 7nm process technology although its chip yield rates are low, a source has previously said. At least some of Huawei's 910Cs use chips that were made by Taiwanese contract chip manufacturing giant TSMC 2330.TW for China-based Sophgo, according to one of the sources and a fourth person. Commerce Department investigating TSMC The Commerce Department has been investigating TSMC's work for Sophgo after one of its TSMC-made chips was found in a 910B processor. TSMC made nearly three million chips in recent years that matched the design ordered by Sophgo, according to Lennart Heim, a researcher at RAND's Technology and Security and Policy Center in Arlington, Virginia, who is tracking Chinese developments in AI. Sophgo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. TSMC said it complies with regulatory requirements and it has not supplied Huawei since mid-September 2020. Sign up for the Business & Innovation Newsletter >>

Huawei Scrambles To Meet Chinese GPU Demand Following Nvidia Export Ban

With its latest AI chip, the Ascend 910C, Huawei could fill a gap in the market left by Nvidia, which can no longer ship AI chips to China. | Credit: Kevin Frayer / Stringer via Getty Images. Following the U.S. administration's move to restrict Nvidia H20 exports to China, AI developers in the country are turning to alternative GPU suppliers. With the world's leading AI hardware firm essentially locked out of the Chinese market by the latest export restrictions, Huawei has a chance to step up and plans to start shipping a new H20 alternative as early as next month. Nvidia Hit by China Restrictions First launched in October 2023, Nvidia's H20 was designed to circumvent U.S. export restrictions that prohibited the firm from selling more advanced AI chips to China. Although less powerful than H100 or H200 chips, the H20 proved to be a hit with Chinese customers, leading to shortages among server manufacturers. Amid heightened trade tensions between Washington and Beijing, the U.S. government recently told Nvidia it would need a license to export H20s to China. Long before the U.S. government restricted H20 exports, Huawei had emerged as a leading Nvidia competitor in the Chinese market. As they look to diversify their supply chains and wean themselves off Nvidia hardware, Chinese Big Tech companies have turned to Huawei's current flagship AI Chip, the Ascend 910B. Meanwhile, Reuters reported on Tuesday that Huawei has already shipped the first units of its next-generation 910C to Chinese customers, with mass shipments expected as early as next month. The new chip reportedly combines two 910B GPUs into a single device, doubling its memory and compute capacity and leapfrogging the performance of Nvidia's H20. The Evolving Chinese GPU Market While Nvidia's H20 is less powerful than the firm's most advanced AI chips, initially, Chinese alternatives still couldn't compete with its performance. Because the new 910B outperforms Nvidia's China-compliant hardware, Huawei may have been on course to usurp its American rival even without the latest export restrictions. But by blocking H20 sales in the country, the U.S. government has further accelerated Huawei's capture of the Chinese AI market.

Top Tech News: Huawei, AI Tech, PhD Graduates and More

Huawei is stepping in to fill the AI chip void in China, as the U.S. bars Nvidia from selling its H20 processor there. Huawei's new 910C chip, which combines two 910B processors, offers comparable performance to Nvidia's H100 chip. The company plans to begin mass shipments next month. Nvidia and AMD are both facing export bans from the U.S. for their AI chips, impacting their stock prices. Huawei's upcoming Ascend 920 chip, expected later this year, could further challenge Nvidia, depending on whether China's SMIC can meet the production demands for these advanced chips.

Huawei set to mass ship 910C AI chip to Chinese customers By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Huawei Technologies is preparing to start mass shipments of its advanced 910C artificial intelligence (AI) chip to clients in China as early as next month, according a Reuters report on Monday. Some shipments of the chip have already been dispatched. This development comes at a convenient time for Chinese AI firms, which have been seeking domestic alternatives to the H20, the main AI chip that Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) was previously permitted to sell freely in the Chinese market. However, this month, the U.S. administration under President Donald Trump informed Nvidia that sales of the H20 would now require an export license. Huawei's 910C chip, a graphics processing unit (GPU), signifies an architectural evolution rather than a technological breakthrough, as per one of the sources and another person familiar with its design. The 910C chip achieves performance on par with Nvidia's H100 chip by merging two 910B processors into a single package using advanced integration techniques.

China tech giants hoarded Nvidia H20 chips worth billions before US curbs - Nikkei By Investing.com

The three companies rushed to secure around one million H20 chips -- nearly a full year's supply -- in anticipation of the U.S. cutting off shipments in April, the Nikkei report said. These chips, specifically designed to comply with U.S. export controls, are vital for AI applications, particularly inference tasks. ByteDance, one of the most aggressive buyers, and other firms reportedly placed rush orders worth over $12 billion, with several billion dollars' worth shipped before the new restrictions took effect earlier this month, according to the report. The H20 is a downgraded version of Nvidia's H100 chip, popular in China due to its lower power requirements compared to the original model. Earlier this month, Nvidia said it would take a $5.5 billion hit in the first quarter due to the new restrictions. With the new curbs, Chinese firms are looking at alternatives like Huawei's Ascend chips and exploring ways to bypass the export restrictions, including setting up overseas subsidiaries, Nikkei reported. The stockpiling comes amid surging demand for AI computing power in China, fueled by the rise of applications like DeepSeek integrated into Tencent's WeChat.

How could Huawei's new AI chip impact Nvidia? Piper Sandler weighs in By Investing.com

Investing.com - The emergence of a new advanced artificial intelligence chip from Huawei could threaten U.S. semiconductor giant Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) in the near term, according to analysts at Piper Sandler. Huawei is looking to begin mass shipments of its 910C AI processor to Chinese customers as early as next month, Reuters reported earlier this week. The 910C is more of an architectural evolution than a technological advancement and offers comparable performance to Nvidia's H100 offering, Reuters said. Citing sources familiar with the matter, the news agency said that some shipments of the 910C -- known as Ascend -- may have already been made. The release comes at an opportune time for Chinese AI firms, many of whom have been racing to find domestic providers after more stringent U.S. rules on the export to China of Nvidia's high-end H20 chip were put in place by the Trump administration. Earlier this month, the White House told Nvidia that sales of the H20 must require an export license. The move was seen as the latest push by Washington to curb China's development in critical technologies, particular in its military. In a note to clients, the Piper Sandler analysts led by Harsh Kumar argued that, even if the restrictions on H20 exports to China were not enacted, the 910C would still have provided Chinese customers "with a viable second source at minimum with much less risk." "The economic war with China is set to continue with the Trump Administration and efforts from both sides to make it harder to do business will likely not stop in the future," the analysts wrote. "As such, any future generations of compute chips for China from Nvidia will most likely come under threat in our view." They added that Nvidia's key operations in China could be hit in the longer term if the U.S. export controls persist in their current form and give Huawei more time to "bridge the performance gap." However, the analysts argued that the rules may not be strict enough, and create "plenty of loopholes" that give China access to critical technologies such as high-bandwidth memory and leading-edge wafer production. "[T]he U.S. government has the potential to close some of the loopholes that Huawei currently has access to in order to taper their technology innovation," they said.

Exclusive-Huawei readies new AI chip for mass shipment as China seeks Nvidia alternatives, sources say

SINGAPORE/BEIJING (Reuters) -Huawei Technologies plans to begin mass shipments of its advanced 910C artificial intelligence chip to Chinese customers as early as next month, two people familiar with the matter said. Some shipments have already been made, they added. The timing is fortuitous for Chinese AI companies which have been left scrambling for domestic alternatives to the H20, the primary AI chip that Nvidia had until recently been allowed to sell freely in the Chinese market. This month, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration told Nvidia that sales of the H20 would require an export licence. Huawei's 910C, a graphics processing unit (GPU), represents an architectural evolution rather than a technological breakthrough, according to one of the two people and a third source familiar with its design. It achieves performance comparable to Nvidia's H100 chip by combining two 910B processors into a single package through advanced integration techniques, they said. That means it has double the computing power and memory capacity of the 910B and it also has incremental improvements, including enhanced support for diverse AI workload data, they added. All sources were not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified. Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Seeking to limit China's technological development, particularly advances for its military, Washington has cut China off from Nvidia's most advanced AI products including its flagship B200 chip. The H100 chip, for example, was banned from sale in China in 2022 by U.S. authorities before it was even launched. This has allowed Huawei and Chinese GPU startups such as Moore Threads and Iluvatar CoreX to go after what has primarily been a market dominated by Nvidia. The U.S. Commerce Department's latest export curbs on Nvidia's H20 "will mean that Huawei's Ascend 910C GPU will now become the hardware of choice for (Chinese) AI model developers and for deploying inference capacity," said Paul Triolo, a partner at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge Group. Late last year, Huawei distributed samples of the 910C to several technology firms and started accepting orders, sources have said. Reuters was not able to ascertain which companies would be primarily producing the 910C. China's SMIC is manufacturing some main components of the GPUs using its N+2 7nm process technology although its chip yield rates are low, a source has previously said. At least some of Huawei's 910Cs use chips that were made by Taiwanese contract chip manufacturing giant TSMC for China-based Sophgo, according to one of the sources and a fourth person. The Commerce Department has been investigating TSMC's work for Sophgo after one of its TSMC-made chips was found in a 910B processor. TSMC made nearly three million chips in recent years that matched the design ordered by Sophgo, according to Lennart Heim, a researcher at RAND's Technology and Security and Policy Center in Arlington, Virginia, who is tracking Chinese developments in AI. Sophgo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. TSMC said it complies with regulatory requirements and it has not supplied Huawei since mid-September 2020. (Reporting by Fanny Potkin, Che Pan and Brenda Goh; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

China's Huawei develops new AI chip, seeking to match Nvidia, WSJ reports

(Reuters) -China's Huawei Technologies is preparing to test its newest and most powerful artificial-intelligence processor, hoping to replace some higher-end products of U.S. chip giant Nvidia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. Huawei has approached some Chinese tech companies about testing the technical feasibility of the new chip, called the Ascend 910D, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. The Chinese company hopes that the latest iteration of its Ascend AI processors will be more powerful than Nvidia's H100, and is slated to receive the first batch of samples of the processor as early as late May, the report added. Reuters reported on Monday that Huawei plans to begin mass shipments of its advanced 910C artificial intelligence chip to Chinese customers as early as next month. Huawei and its Chinese peers have struggled for years to match Nvidia in building top-end chips that could compete with the U.S. firm's products for training models, a process where data is fed to algorithms to help them learn to make accurate decisions. Seeking to limit China's technological development, particularly advances for its military, Washington has cut China off from Nvidia's most advanced AI products, including its flagship B200 chip. The H100 chip, for example, was banned from sale in China in 2022 by U.S. authorities before it was even launched. Nvidia declined to comment while Huawei did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. (Reporting by Pretish M J in Bengaluru; Editing by David Evans and Mark Porter)