Huawei prepares new AI chip to rival Nvidia in China

Huawei‘s upcoming 910C AI chip represents a critical development in China’s semiconductor industry at a time of increasing U.S. export restrictions on advanced technology. The mass shipment of these chips, beginning as early as next month, arrives just as Chinese AI companies face new limitations on accessing Nvidia‘s H20 chips, creating an urgent market opportunity for domestic alternatives in China’s rapidly evolving AI landscape.

The big picture: Huawei plans to begin mass shipments of its advanced 910C AI chip to Chinese customers as early as May 2025, with some deliveries already underway.

• The timing coincides with the Trump administration‘s recent decision to require export licenses for Nvidia’s H20 chips, which had been the primary AI chip available to Chinese companies.
• Huawei’s 910C represents an architectural evolution that achieves performance comparable to Nvidia’s H100 chip, which has been banned from sale in China since 2022.

How it works: The 910C combines two 910B processors into a single package through advanced integration techniques, effectively doubling the computing power and memory capacity.

• The design includes incremental improvements such as enhanced support for diverse AI workload data.
• Sources familiar with its design describe it as an architectural evolution rather than a technological breakthrough.

Why this matters: U.S. export restrictions have created a significant market opportunity for Chinese chip manufacturers in the domestic AI hardware space.

• Paul Triolo of Albright Stonebridge Group noted that Huawei’s Ascend 910C GPU “will now become the hardware of choice” for Chinese AI model developers.
• The development demonstrates China’s push toward technological self-sufficiency in response to U.S. restrictions aimed at limiting its technological and military advancement.

Behind the numbers: Huawei began distributing samples of the 910C to several technology firms and accepting orders in late 2024.

• The company declined to comment on what it called speculation about shipment plans for the 910C and its capabilities.
• Reuters was not able to determine which companies would be primarily producing the 910C.