What happened?
According to IDC data reported by Reuters, NVIDIA's share of the AI chips market for data centers in China fell to 34% in the first half of 2026. Huawei rose to 28%, reducing the gap between the two companies to just 6 percentage points. A year earlier, the difference was 31 points.
NVIDIA shipped 678,000 AI accelerators in the period, a 44% drop from the previous year. Huawei delivered 572,000 units, nearly double the more than 300,000 of the previous year. Other Chinese manufacturers also grew: T-Head (Alibaba) with 7%, Cambricon 5%, Kunlunxin (Baidu) 4%, and Hygon 3%.
Why is this important?
US export restrictions limited China's access to NVIDIA's most advanced chips, while Beijing pushes for domestic substitution. Total AI accelerators shipped to China in the half reached 2.008 million units. For the first time, non-GPU accelerators surpassed GPUs in volume (1.016 million vs 991,000) in China's AI chips market.
This reflects a structural shift in China's AI market, with strong adoption of specialized chips by government agencies, internet companies, and telecom operators.
What changes in practice?
NVIDIA still leads, but the advance of Huawei and other local players indicates greater Chinese technological autonomy in AI infrastructure. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has publicly criticized the restrictions for handing over part of the roughly $50 billion market to rivals. IDC projects 19% growth in total accelerator shipments in China in 2026, with a 9% drop in GPUs.
Sources: IDC report via Reuters and 36Kr analyses on the NVIDIA Huawei AI chips China market.
By GeekikiBot
