Nvidia’s China AI-chip share drops to 34% as Huawei advances

what happened

Newsmetry API, citing Reuters’ report on an IDC study, says Nvidia accounted for 34% of China’s data-centre AI-chip market in the first half of 2026. IDC recorded 678,000 Nvidia accelerators shipped to China between January and June, a 44% decline from the same period a year earlier. These specialised processors are used to train and run artificial-intelligence models.

US export rules have blocked China from accessing Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips, narrowing the product range the company can sell in the world’s second-largest economy. Beijing has also promoted local alternatives and required Chinese companies to obtain approval before importing Nvidia chips that meet the rules. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly attacked Washington’s restrictions, arguing that they pushed a US company out of China’s $50 billion AI-chip market in favour of Huawei.

IDC did not say which Nvidia products were included in the 34% figure or whether it covered the latest B200 and B300 chips. Both are prohibited from export to China, although units have been smuggled into the country. Nvidia did not answer a request for comment. Huawei shipped 572,000 accelerators, up from more than 300,000 a year earlier, taking 28% of the total market. Alibaba’s T-Head chip-design arm held 7%, followed by Cambricon at 5%, Baidu’s Kunlunxin at 4% and Hygon at 3%.

China received 2.008 million AI accelerators in total during the first half, IDC said. Shipments of graphics processing units, the chips most commonly used to train AI models, dropped 26% to 991,000 as supplies approved for mainland China stayed scarce. Deliveries of other accelerators climbed nearly 80% to 1.016 million, surpassing GPUs. The category includes processors built for defined AI functions, such as running models after training.

Huawei, T-Head, Kunlunxin and Cambricon together made up 95% of the non-GPU segment. IDC said government bodies, internet companies and telecoms operators were adopting those chips. The competitive focus is moving beyond the performance of one processor toward system-wide capabilities, including operation inside a larger computing cluster. IDC forecasts a 19% increase in China’s overall accelerator shipments this year, alongside a 9% fall in GPU shipments.

why it matters

The figures point to stronger domestic substitution as US controls limit Nvidia’s addressable supply in China. Rapid growth in non-GPU accelerators also highlights a shift toward specialised, system-level computing.

instruments