Huawei’s Plan to Become China’s Nvidia

The company is ramping up development of alternatives to Nvidia’s AI-computing systems, part of China’s push to reduce reliance on U.S. technology.

Huawei Technologies is ramping up development of alternatives to Nvidia’s artificial-intelligence computing systems, part of China’s push to reduce reliance on U.S. technology.

The Chinese company said Thursday it would release two new AI chips next year. It said it has shipped more than 1,000 of its AI-computing systems—which bundle hundreds of chips to boost computing power—to more than 370 customers.

For its computing and communications business, “Huawei’s goal is to become Nvidia,” Guo Ping, chairman of Huawei’s supervisory board, told new employees recently, according to an official transcript.

Since the Biden administration, the U.S. has barred Chinese companies from buying Nvidia’s best AI chips and blocked China’s chip makers, including Huawei, from buying top-of-the-line equipment. Huawei is subject to further curbs because it has been blacklisted by the U.S. government since 2019.

According to Morgan Stanley, China’s AI chip market is projected to grow to $67 billion by 2030, with domestic companies taking an 86% share, compared with less than half in 2025.

While Huawei’s chip-making technology still trails Nvidia’s, the Chinese firm is moving aggressively to keep up, with support from Beijing and other domestic companies. Huawei is taking advantage of its expertise in telecommunications equipment.

“We can’t be at the mercy of others forever—one day they say they’ll sell you a chip, and the next day they say they won’t,” Huawei’s rotating chairman, Eric Xu, said Thursday. “So even if the technology is a bit less advanced, at least we have something and aren’t living in constant uncertainty.”

Here is how Huawei plans to overcome U.S. barriers.

Huawei is developing workarounds and new designs to squeeze in more computing power while using less advanced equipment. Traditional fabrication relies on ultraprecision machinery to squeeze more circuits onto a single chip; Huawei is trying to improve computing efficiency through techniques such as layering circuits within a single chip.

Huawei said Thursday it would introduce two new AI chips next year, the Ascend 960DT in the first quarter and 960PR in the third quarter, both running ahead of their initial timelines. New chips are also planned for 2028 and 2029. The computing power that these chips in the pipeline can individually deliver still trails the best Nvidia chips available today, according to specifications released by the two companies.

The company works with domestic AI chip users including AI-developer DeepSeek to get feedback.

Huawei bundles hundreds of thousands of AI chips into massive clusters that can function like a single computer. In chaining many weaker chips together, it aims to mimic cutting-edge models.

In a traditional server, various processors and memory units operate like different countries speaking distinct languages. Moving data between them requires it to be translated before it can be processed, which can create bottlenecks.

Huawei’s technology, called UnifiedBus, aims to establish a universal language so different chips, even across separate server racks, can communicate directly.

Getting many AI chips to talk to each other uses a lot of power. Huawei has rolled out a technology called near-packaged optics designed to save energy. It uses components to transmit data and places them close to the chips to increase efficiency.

Nvidia and Broadcom in their computing systems use something similar aimed at improving transmission called co-packaged optics.

Huawei has said its chip manufacturing capacity remains constrained and that these new techniques bring their own challenges. Bundling chips together requires more precise and reliable communications and highly sophisticated software, hurdles that some data-center operators warn are difficult to clear.