Chinese Tech Giants Pivot to Huawei AI Chips

Huawei is experiencing a surge in orders for its Ascend 950 AI chips from major Chinese technology firms, including ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba. This demand follows the release of DeepSeek's V4 artificial intelligence model, which was specifically optimized for Huawei hardware to reduce reliance on American semiconductors.

While the 950PR variant outperforms Nvidia's H20 chip, it remains less powerful than the H200, which is unavailable in China due to regulatory disputes between Washington and Beijing. Manufacturing remains a bottleneck, as U.S. export restrictions on advanced chipmaking tools limit China's overall production capacity.

Huawei expects to ship approximately 750,000 units of the 950PR this year. Mass production began in April, with full-scale shipments scheduled for the second half of 2026.