The U.S. export restrictions on advanced artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors are weakening Nvidia's position in the Chinese market. Chinese semiconductor companies, including Huawei, are increasing their domestic product supply, narrowing the market share gap with Nvidia.
According to market research firm IDC, Nvidia's share of the Chinese AI accelerator market for data centers fell to 34% in the first half of this year. Huawei captured 28%, reducing the gap between the two companies to 6 percentage points, down from a 35-point difference last year.
From January to June, Nvidia shipped 678,000 AI accelerators to China, a 44% decrease from the same period last year. In contrast, Huawei shipped 572,000 units, nearly doubling its shipments from over 300,000 in the first half of last year, closely trailing Nvidia.
Other Chinese companies are also expanding their market presence. Alibaba's semiconductor design subsidiary, T-head, holds a 7% market share, followed by Cambrian at 5%, Baidu's Kunlunxin at 4%, and Haigon at 3%. Among the 11 Chinese semiconductor companies tracked by IDC, 9 reported increased shipments compared to the previous year.
This shift is influenced by U.S. export regulations and China's government policies promoting domestic semiconductor production. As the U.S. restricts exports of high-performance AI semiconductors to China, Chinese companies are ramping up their adoption of domestic chips.
The composition of products in the Chinese AI accelerator market is also changing. In the first half of this year, total AI accelerator shipments in China reached 2,008,000 units. Of these, shipments of graphics processing units (GPUs), widely used for AI model training, fell 26% year-on-year to 991,000 units. Conversely, shipments of non-GPU AI accelerators surged by approximately 80% to 1,016,000 units, surpassing GPUs for the first time. These chips, specialized for specific AI computations or inference tasks, are primarily supplied by Chinese companies such as Huawei, T-head, Kunlunxin, and Cambrian, which together account for 95% of the non-GPU accelerator market in China.
According to IDC data, Nvidia's market share in the Chinese AI accelerator market was approximately 55% last year, while Huawei held 20%. T-head accounted for 7%, Kunlunxin for 3%, Cambrian for 3%, and AMD for 4%.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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