Nvidia's China AI-chip share falls as Huawei closes gap, report finds

According to an IDC report seen by Reuters, Nvidia's share of China's data-centre AI chip market dropped to 34% over the first six months of 2026. US export controls limited the company's supplies in the country, while local competitors, with Huawei at the forefront, expanded their shipments. Nvidia delivered 678,000 AI accelerators in China between January and June, a decline of 44% year on year.

Huawei's shipments climbed to 572,000 units, compared with more than 300,000 the year before, and the company now holds 28% of total volume, according to IDC. T-Head, the chip design unit of Alibaba, held 7%, while Cambricon, Kunlunxin and Hygon held 5%, 4% and 3% respectively. Across all categories, the first-half total reached 2.008 million units, while GPU deliveries fell by 26% to 991,000 as supply in mainland China stayed tight.

Non-GPU accelerators, which are designed for narrow tasks such as running trained models, climbed nearly 80% to 1.016 million and overtook GPUs by volume. IDC said competition is moving from single-chip performance toward system-level capability, including how chips perform within larger computing clusters. It projects overall accelerator shipments in China will rise 19% this year, even as GPU volumes decline 9%.