Nvidia's China AI-chip share falls to 34% as Huawei reaches 28%

In the first six months of 2026, Nvidia shipped 678,000 AI accelerators into China, down 44% from a year earlier. In the same period, Huawei shipped 572,000, against more than 300,000 a year before. The numbers come from a report by the market-research firm IDC, seen by Reuters, and they move Nvidia's share of China's data-center AI accelerator market to 34% and Huawei's to 28%.

AI accelerators are the chips that train AI models and run them afterwards, a step called inference. US export restrictions constrained Nvidia's supplies while Chinese chipmakers expanded their shipments. Beijing, for its part, has promoted domestic alternatives and requires Chinese companies to seek approval before importing compliant Nvidia chips. The restriction is the backdrop here: it is the reason the supply gap opened in the first place.

The two headline shares do not measure the same thing. The 34% covers China's data-center AI chip market, while the 28% covers the overall AI accelerator market, which IDC counts at 2.008 million units for the half-year. IDC did not specify which Nvidia products entered its 34% calculation. Shipments are also counted in units, so a lower-cost Huawei inference chip and a higher-end Nvidia processor each count as one, and the unit count does not show value. Per the account of IDC's data published by China Daily, Nvidia's share by value is likely higher than its unit share.

What is clearly visible is the spread of Chinese suppliers. Shipments of non-GPU accelerators rose nearly 80% to 1.016 million units, overtaking GPU shipments in the same half-year. Alibaba's T-Head held 7%, Cambricon 5%, Kunlunxin 4% and Hygon 3%, and nine of the 11 Chinese suppliers tracked by IDC increased their shipments. For Chinese buyers and suppliers, the first half of 2026 is the period when domestic alternatives moved from a secondary option to a large share of the market, with Huawei alone shipping more than half a million units.

The figures cover January to June 2026 and nothing beyond that period. Nvidia did not respond to Reuters' request for comment, so the company's own account of its China sales is not part of the report.