Nvidia's share of China's AI chip market falls to 34% as Huawei nearly doubles shipments
Key Takeaways
- •Nvidia shipped 678,000 AI accelerators in China during the first half of 2026, a 44% year-over-year decline that IDC links to US export restrictions barring sales of its most advanced chips.
- •Huawei raised its China shipments from roughly 300,000 to 572,000 units over the same period, narrowing Nvidia's market-share lead to six percentage points.
- •Five Chinese vendors—Huawei, T-Head, Cambricon, Kunlunxin and Hygon—collectively hold 47% of the market, exceeding Nvidia's remaining 34% share.
- •Non-GPU accelerator shipments in China surged about 80% to 1.016 million units to become the majority of the market, with four domestic firms controlling 95% of that segment.
- •IDC expects China's GPU shipments to decline 9% for the full year while total accelerator shipments rise 19%, with competition increasingly centered on the efficiency of interconnected chip clusters.
Nvidia's share of China's data-center AI chip market fell to 34% in the first half of 2026, as United States export controls cut the company's shipments by 44% while Huawei's shipments nearly doubled, according to IDC data reported by Reuters.
Nvidia shipped 678,000 AI accelerators in China between January and June, down 44% from the same period in 2025, according to IDC figures cited by Reuters.
Huawei moved in the opposite direction, increasing its shipments from roughly 300,000 units to 572,000 over the same period. That lifted Huawei's market share to 28% and narrowed Nvidia's lead to six percentage points.
Huawei is not the only domestic competitor gaining ground. Alibaba's chip-design arm T-Head holds 7% of the market, followed by Cambricon at 5%, Baidu's Kunlunxin at 4% and Hygon at 3%. IDC surveyed 11 Chinese chipmakers and found that nine of them increased shipments over the past year. Taken together, the five domestic vendors named in the report hold 47% of the market — more than Nvidia's remaining 34% — a measure of how far domestic supply has scaled in a single year.
Why Nvidia lost ground
US chip restrictions have barred Nvidia from selling its most advanced AI chips to China, and IDC directly links the company's declining market share to those limitations.
Beijing, for its part, is encouraging the use of domestic chips and requires Chinese firms to obtain approval before importing Nvidia processors that comply with US export rules. Chinese buyers have also largely avoided the limited range of Nvidia chips that Washington has approved for sale.
The market is moving past GPUs
China shipped about 2.008 million AI accelerators in the first half of the year, but the composition of that total has shifted. GPU shipments fell 26% to 991,000 units, while shipments of non-GPU accelerators, designed for specific AI workloads such as inference, surged about 80% to 1.016 million. On those figures, non-GPU designs accounted for the majority of accelerators shipped in China during the period.
Four Chinese companies—Huawei, T-Head, Kunlunxin and Cambricon—hold 95% of the non-GPU segment, according to IDC, with their customers drawn mostly from government agencies, internet companies and large telecom operators.
IDC forecasts that GPU shipments in China will decline 9% for the full year, even as total accelerator shipments rise 19%, driven by demand for non-GPU chips. The firm says competition is increasingly shifting from individual chip performance to how efficiently large clusters of interconnected chips operate as a single system.
