In August 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that Huawei was preparing to launch a new AI chip called the Ascend 910C, which aims to challenge Nvidia’s advantage in China.
Fast forward eight months, Huawei is currently preparing to ship large quantities of Ascend 910Cs to its Chinese customers. Huawei is expected to start large-scale delivery as early as next month, according to a Reuters report released Monday.
Huawei 910c AI chipset for Chinese freight inside nvidia dip
The 910C was already being tested in several major tech companies, but the early signals suggest that it is comparable to, or even outperformed, Nvidia’s H100 in both performance and efficiency. Huawei has been quietly describing potential clients, so we are confident that chips will become an important turning point in the Chinese AI race.
“Huawei Technologies plans to launch large-scale shipping of advanced 910C artificial intelligence chips to its Chinese customers next month,” Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the issue. “I added that some shipping has already been made.”
The timing is no longer strategic. The US has tightened export restrictions on Nvidia’s H20 chips, cut off key supply of China’s top high-tech companies, and opened the door for serious domestic alternatives.
Nvidia’s challenger to AI governance
The Ascend 910C is Huawei’s latest GPU built for AI training and inference tasks. Two old 910B processors are fused into a single unit and used clever packages to improve performance. Industry watchers say it offers around 800 TFLOP/s on the FP16 and pushes 3.2 TB/s on memory bandwidth. This brings you closer to 80% of NVIDIA’s H100 performance. This is enough for Chinese companies to look for alternatives.
The chip is built primarily on a 7nm process sourced from Taiwan’s TSMC, and China’s Smic has similarly intervened. Huawei had stocked TSMC orders before sanctions hit, so Smic is reportedly expanding its own production. Together, they are expected to support Huawei’s plan to ship millions of chips.
CloudMatrix 384: AI Cluster Play on Huawei
Huawei not only sells chips, but also bundles them into a full-scale system. The CloudMatrix 384 AI cluster includes 384 ASCEND 910C units, providing 300 peta of computing reported. This surpasses NVIDIA’s GB200 NVL72 system, reaching around 180 petaflops. trade off? Higher energy consumption. But in China, where electricity is cheap and it’s difficult to get high-end chips, it’s a compromise that most customers will be happy to make.
US curb, China opening
The timing wasn’t even better for Huawei. Just in April this year, the US government rolled out new restrictions that forced Nvidia to obtain a license to export H20 chips to China. The H20 was Nvidia’s AI chip for the Chinese market. It’s stopped now. This leaves companies like Baidu, Tencent and Bytedance Scrambling behind, and Huawei has already filled the gap.
Huawei began sampling the 910C to major tech companies in late 2024, but has already met early orders. Analysts say this shift is important. Paul Triolo of Albright Stonebridge Group said, “Huawei’s Ascend 910C GPU will become the hardware of choice for AI model developers in China.” White Oak Capital’s Nori Chiou reiterated that the export rules are “effectively promoting Nvidia’s Chinese customers into Huawei’s AI chips.”
Nvidia feels pressure
Nvidia’s dominance in AI will not disappear any time soon, but the Chinese market is a hit. After the latest restrictions, Nvidia shares fell 3.1% in pre-market trading. The company received a $5.5 billion bill related to H20 exports. CEO Jensen Fan admitted that revenue from China has dropped to half of what it was before control began.
Meanwhile, Huawei is making real progress. Huang himself acknowledged Huawei’s growing presence, calling it a serious rival in a recent Financial Times interview.
Reduce dependencies
The 910C is the heart of China’s larger plan to reduce its dependence on foreign AI chips. As Nvidia’s most advanced processors become more difficult to buy, Chinese companies are competing to develop homemade alternatives. Huawei has improved its Ascend line yields by 40% since last year, aiming to produce 100,000 910C units and 300,000 910BS in 2025.
On the software side, Huawei’s platform continues to move forward with Nvidia’s CUDA in terms of maturity, but is catching up. It is supported by partnerships with AI companies like Deepseek, and some believe this collaboration could pose a long-term challenge to global Nvidia’s domination.
There are some bumps
Still, not everyone is for sale. Critics say Huawei’s chip strategy relies heavily on brute force. This is to stack more processors instead of optimizing performance. This will increase power usage and increase the system. Others are cautious, calling the 910C “PowerPoint silicon” until proven with widespread developments and real-world benchmarks.
There is also the issue of supply. Huawei relies in part on foreign chip makers like TSMC. If the US tightens further restrictions, it could put pressure on the entire operation.
What’s next?
Huawei is walking through the open door left by Nvidia’s export issues and is doing it with confidence. The 910C may not beat Nvidia’s chip specs, but for now it’s good enough. More importantly, it is available.
If Huawei can build a supply chain, improve the software stack and deliver real performance at scale, it may be more than just a backup option. This may be the beginning of actual changes in AI hardware races, especially in markets that are detached from US technology.
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