Nvidia held 34% of China’s data-centre AI-chip market in the first half of 2026 against Huawei’s 28%, as Nvidia’s accelerator shipments fell 44% from a year earlier, Reuters reported on 13 October, citing an IDC report.
Key points
- Nvidia shipped 678,000 AI accelerators in China from January through June, down 44% from a year earlier.
- Huawei shipped 572,000, up from more than 300,000 a year earlier.
- China’s non-GPU accelerator shipments rose nearly 80% to 1.016 million units, exceeding GPU shipments of 991,000.
- IDC expects total accelerator shipments in China to grow 19% in 2026, while GPU shipments fall 9%.
Nvidia ships 678,000 accelerators
Nvidia shipped 678,000 AI accelerators in China between January and June, according to the IDC figures. Its 44% year-on-year decline in shipments came as US export controls limited the Nvidia products eligible for sale in China. AI accelerators are specialised chips used to train models and run them after training.
Washington’s restrictions cover Nvidia’s most powerful AI chips. Beijing has also required Chinese companies to seek approval before importing Nvidia chips that comply with US rules, Reuters reported. Chinese authorities have promoted domestic alternatives to imported chips.
Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, has criticised the US restrictions. He has said they forced a US company to cede China’s $50 billion AI-chip market to Huawei. That figure is Huang’s description of the market, rather than a measure of the shipments in IDC’s report.
Reuters said IDC did not specify which Nvidia products were counted in its 34% share. The report also left open whether that figure included B200 and B300 chips, which are barred from export to China. Nvidia did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Huawei ships 572,000 accelerators
Huawei shipped 572,000 AI accelerators in the first half, compared with more than 300,000 in the same period a year earlier, IDC said. Its 28% market share placed it behind Nvidia’s 34% in the overall data-centre AI-chip market measured by IDC.
Other Chinese suppliers held smaller shares. Alibaba’s chip-design unit T-Head accounted for 7% of the market, followed by Cambricon at 5%, Baidu’s Kunlunxin at 4% and Hygon at 3%. Nine of the 11 Chinese chipmakers tracked by IDC increased their shipments from a year earlier.
Huawei’s position also extends to software for its chips. DeepSeek partnered with Huawei on programming tools for Ascend chips, AI Affairs reported. IDC said competition among chip suppliers was moving towards system-level capabilities, including how processors operate together in larger computing clusters.
Non-GPU shipments reach 1.016 million units
China’s total AI-accelerator shipments reached 2.008 million units in the first half of 2026, IDC said. Within that total, GPU shipments fell 26% to 991,000 units. GPUs are widely used to train AI models, and IDC linked the decline in shipments to limited supplies of products eligible for sale in mainland China.
Shipments of other AI accelerators rose nearly 80% to 1.016 million units, exceeding GPU shipments by volume. That category includes chips designed for particular tasks, such as running models that have already been trained. Huawei, T-Head, Kunlunxin and Cambricon together accounted for 95% of those non-GPU shipments.
IDC said government agencies, internet companies and telecoms providers were adopting chips in the non-GPU category. Its figures measure units shipped across the market, covering both those products and GPUs, rather than sales revenue for either type of accelerator.
IDC expects total AI-accelerator shipments in China to grow 19% in 2026, even as it projects a 9% fall in GPU shipments.
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