Summary: The US government is restricting the tech that NVIDIA exports to China. In response and to fill in a potential gap, Huawei is reportedly getting ready to ship its Ascend 910C chip to Chinese AI developers. However, NVIDIA isn’t standing by idly. The company reportedly has plans to cater some products exclusively to the Chinese market.
There was a time when Huawei’s equipment powered almost every major telecom network in the world. From 4G to early 5G rollouts, the company was everywhere. This was until US sanctions basically closed the door on Huawei’s business. However, Huawei has pivoted and is starting to lean into AI with its Ascend 910C chip.
Huawei to fill in a gap in the market
According to reports, Huawei is preparing to ship its Ascend 910C chip to Chinese AI firms as early as next month. The US government is steadily preventing NVIDIA from exporting its hardware to China. Seeing as how NVIDIA powers the majority of AI development, Chinese developers are scrambling to find domestic alternatives. And that’s where Huawei’s 910C is stepping in to fill that void.
The Huawei 910C chip is a refined version of the older 910B, combining two processors into one package using advanced integration. It reportedly delivers performance comparable to Nvidia’s H100, with doubled compute power, memory, and better handling of mixed AI workloads.
However, this doesn’t mean that Huawei has completely taken over the Chinese market. NVIDIA isn’t going to sit by the side and watch its market share whittle down to zero.
NVIDIA’s China-specific plans
According to a new report from Ctee, the company is now planning to develop China-specific AI chips in partnership with local players like DeepSeek. The plan is to shift R&D and supply chain operations into China to build an ecosystem that would allow it to bypass US restrictions altogether. Nvidia may even establish an R&D center in the country, relying on local HBM, process nodes, and packaging partners. It’s a bold move, but an important one. Especially when you consider that NVIDIA’s revenue from China alone accounts for billions of dollars.
While it’s easy to see what the US is trying to do in limiting technology exports to China, we’re not sure if the results are what they’re hoping for. If anything, it feels like Chinese firms are accelerating their developmental process in a bid to find workarounds to create viable alternatives.
DeepSeek is a great example of that. The AI company seemingly burst out of nowhere and absolutely wrecked the US tech market in one night. Sure, there are issues with it, but it shows that China isn’t as far behind as the US would like.
