IDC: Huawei Ascend shipped 572,000 units in the first half; gap with Nvidia narrows to 6 percentage points

On October 19, according to the latest IDC report, the landscape of China's data center AI chip market changed significantly in the first half of 2026. Although Nvidia still ranked first with a 34% share, its shipments were only 678,000 units, a sharp year-on-year decline of 44%. Huawei's Ascend, meanwhile, captured a 28% share with shipments of 572,000 units, narrowing the gap between the two to just 6 percentage points.

The direct reason for Nvidia's declining share is the continued tightening of U.S. export controls. Its most advanced Blackwell architecture chips cannot enter the Chinese market, and revenue from the H200 chips approved for export accounts for less than 1% of its total data center business revenue. Jensen Huang has repeatedly criticized this policy, saying that the $50 billion Chinese AI chip market is being forced to cede to Huawei.

The wave of domestic substitution is benefiting the entire industry chain. In addition to Huawei, Alibaba's T-Head ranked third with a 7% share, while Cambricon, Kunlunxin, and Hygon accounted for 5%, 4%, and 3%, respectively. Of the 11 Chinese chipmakers tracked by IDC, 9 saw year-on-year shipment growth in the first half of the year.

A more symbolic change is that shipments of non-GPU accelerators reached 1.016 million units, up nearly 80% year on year, surpassing GPU shipments of 991,000 units for the first time. Huawei, T-Head, Kunlunxin, and Cambricon together accounted for 95% of the non-GPU market, with government agencies, internet companies, and telecom operators as the main adopters.

IDC noted that the focus of market competition is shifting from the performance of individual chips to overall system capabilities, including how chips work collaboratively in large-scale computing clusters.

Morgan Stanley expects China's AI chip self-sufficiency rate to rise from 35% in 2025 to 45% in 2026, and to potentially jump to 68% in 2027.