China Certifies Nine Domestic AI Chips Under National Security Framework

Two Chinese government evaluation bodies certified nine domestic AI training and inference chips under the country's national security and reliability framework on May 26, 2026, marking the first time AI chips have been included as a standalone category. The China Information Technology Security Evaluation Center and the China National Security Technology Evaluation Center jointly released the approved list, which covers products from seven manufacturers: Huawei's Ascend 310 and 910, Alibaba T-Head's Zhenwu M530 and M890, Biren Bilian's 166, Hygon's DCU-3G, Iluvatar's CoreX KCC-V100X, MetaX's MXC600, and Moore Threads' PH100. The certifications, valid for three years, function as a procurement guide for government agencies, state-owned enterprises, and critical infrastructure operators seeking approved domestic alternatives. The move directly expands the Xinchuang initiative, a longstanding campaign to replace foreign hardware and software with domestic substitutes, into the AI infrastructure domain. This expansion comes in response to U.S. export controls on advanced GPUs, which have restricted China's access to foreign-made AI computing hardware and accelerated efforts to build a self-sufficient chip ecosystem.