Huawei forecasts its AI chip sales to reach approximately $12 billion in 2026 — more than 60% above the $7.5 billion recorded in the previous year. Chinese companies are rapidly adopting the Ascend 950PR as Nvidia chip exports remain blocked by US trade restrictions.
Key takeaways
• Huawei AI chip sales forecast for 2026: approximately $12 billion (+60% year-on-year), per Financial Times
• Flagship product: Ascend 950PR — in mass production since March 2026; upgraded 950DT version planned for Q4 2026
• DeepSeek used the Ascend 950PR to optimize inference efficiency in its latest models
• Morgan Stanley: China AI chip market to grow to $67 billion by 2030, with 86% supplied by domestic vendors
• Huawei chips remain at least two generations behind Nvidia; the CANN software ecosystem is less mature than CUDA
Ascend 950PR: production strategy and Huawei roadmap
According to Financial Times reporting from May 1, 2026, orders for Ascend 950PR — Huawei's latest AI processor — are concentrated on chips now in mass production since March 2026. Huawei produces them in partnership with SMIC, China's only advanced-scale semiconductor foundry. An upgraded version, Ascend 950DT, is planned for Q4 2026. Huawei is also opening two additional dedicated production facilities in 2026.
The chip supports inference workloads and is particularly suited for running large language models. Notably, DeepSeek — one of China's leading AI firms — used the Ascend 950PR to optimize inference efficiency in its latest models. This is a meaningful signal: previously, Huawei chips were associated with lower-tier applications, but DeepSeek's adoption raised the chip's credibility in the market.
Why the Chinese market is turning away from Nvidia
The backdrop is political. The Trump administration conditionally permitted H200 exports to China in January 2025, but the Chinese government — as part of its policy to support domestic semiconductor industry — has effectively blocked their legal import. Chinese tech companies, under regulatory and ideological pressure, are switching to domestic alternatives.
Nvidia is feeling the impact directly. Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, publicly warned that a scenario where AI models are optimized on non-US hardware poses a national security threat — a rare move for Huang beyond standard business communications.
Technical comparison: Ascend vs. CUDA — a narrowing gap
Architecturally, Huawei chips remain assessed as at least two generations behind Nvidia's latest products. The CANN (Compute Architecture for Neural Networks) software stack — CUDA's counterpart — is less mature: a smaller library base, smaller developer community, and higher migration cost for workloads built on the Nvidia ecosystem.
However, Huawei's strategy is deliberate. Rather than competing in large model training — where the hardware gap is widest — the company focuses on inference. AI agents, chatbots, recommendation systems: applications where energy efficiency and cost-per-query matter more than peak compute performance. In this niche, the Ascend 950PR is a practical product for Chinese firms.
Why this matters
Morgan Stanley's forecast — 86% of China's AI chip market in domestic hands by 2030 — is not just a number. It signals that the geopolitical decoupling of China's AI hardware market from Western suppliers is irreversible within a decade-long horizon, regardless of any future sanctions relaxation.
For Nvidia, this means a permanent loss of one of the largest datacenter chip markets. For the global AI market, it means an increasingly visible split between two hardware and software ecosystems: CUDA (West) and CANN (China). Porting models between them is becoming costly and technically non-trivial, which may reinforce the trend toward separate AI stacks.
In the near term, SMIC's manufacturing capacity remains the key constraint for Huawei. The Chinese wafer foundry cannot produce below 7nm at scale, limiting energy efficiency and transistor density compared to TSMC-produced chips. This constraint will not be overcome within one to two years.
What's next?
• Ascend 950DT launch in Q4 2026 — Huawei promises performance improvements over 950PR; technical details not disclosed
• Two new Huawei production facilities in 2026 should increase output capacity, but SMIC lithography technology remains the binding constraint
• Evolution of US export policy toward Nvidia chips for China remains a key variable — any policy change could shift market dynamics significantly
Sources
AI Times (KR) — Huawei AI chip sales +60% forecast
Financial Times — primary source of forecasts (via AI Times)
