Tech war: Huawei races to fill void left by Nvidia in China, with home-grown chips becoming popular components in ‘AI boxes’

Huawei chips are becoming popular components in Chinese-made AI boxes, setting up the company to overtake Nvidia in the mainland market

The pace of Huawei’s ascendancy in China’s AI chip market will depend on how quickly it can ramp up production

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Outside a Huawei Technologies store in Nanning, China. The company is challenging Nvidia’s dominance in the country’s AI chip market amid US export restrictions. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 9:30am, 30 May 2024Updated: 10:49am, 30 May 2024

US-sanctioned Huawei Technologies has emerged as a key supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) chips in China after Washington implemented export curbs on Nvidia’s advanced processors, according to industry insiders.

Use of the Chinese company’s self-developed 910B Ascend chips have proliferated in various industries across the country through “AI boxes” – all-in-one machines that combine AI chips, industry-specific algorithms and pre-trained large AI models.

Huawei’s chips are becoming popular components in these Chinese-made machines, setting up the company to take over a market that has so far been dominated by Nvidia.

Nvidia has designed lower-grade chips tailored for China-based clients after the US in October escalated its export restrictions to ban the shipments of the firm’s sophisticated A800, H800 and L40S processors to the country.

But the onslaught of Huawei’s Ascend chips has proved challenging for Nvidia in its third-largest market. CEO Jensen Huang said in a conference call earlier this month that the US firm faces “a lot more competition in China now”.

Huawei declined to provide sales figures for its AI chips, but according to a speech this month by Zhang Dixuan, head of the firm’s Ascend computing business, the Ascend ecosystem now has 40 hardware partners, 1,600 software partners, and 2,900 AI application solutions.

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