Nvidia loses ground to Huawei in China chip market

Nvidia’s push to sell advanced AI chips in China has stalled as U.S. export controls and Beijing’s self-sufficiency drive help domestic suppliers, led by Huawei, gain ground. Jensen Huang said Nvidia had operated in China for 30 years and held about 95% market share before export controls, but acknowledged Chinese rivals have become major competitors.

Bernstein estimated Nvidia had about a 40% market share in China’s AI chips market in 2025, roughly level with Huawei, and predicted Nvidia will shrink to around 8% this year while Huawei rises to about 50%. Analysts said Huawei’s Ascend 950 series is roughly comparable by some measures to Nvidia’s H200, though China still relies on Nvidia chips for cutting-edge work such as training models like DeepSeek’s.

Demand for Nvidia technology remains strong, with smuggling cases highlighting appetite despite restrictions. Nvidia expects around $91 billion of revenue in May-July, up from nearly $82 billion in the previous quarter, excluding any data center compute revenue from China. Huawei is also pursuing overseas markets, but analysts said China’s advanced chip production still falls short of domestic demand.