Huawei Technologies Co. is accelerating the debut of its next-generation AI chip in 2027 by several months as it aims to replace Nvidia Corp. in China and compete on the global stage.
The company’s flagship Ascend 960DT chip, originally slated for commercial availability in late 2027, will now be launched in the first quarter, Huawei’s current rotating chairman Wang Tao said at the company’s annual summit in Shanghai on Thursday.
Another variant of the new series, dubbed 960PR, will be delivered in the third quarter of 2027, Wang added.
Huawei’s sped-up roadmap suggests the Chinese networking and chip leader is gaining confidence in advancing an ambitious three-year strategy for developing semiconductors to eventually replace Nvidia. The company, one of several considered key to Beijing’s push to match the US in AI, has since 2025 become increasingly public about outlining its attempts to develop more powerful versions of hardware essential to building data centers and enabling the frontier Chinese labs like DeepSeek and Moonshot AI.
Wang also highlighted Huawei’s aspiration to offer its AI chips as an alternative to US-origin semiconductors.
“Computing power is key to Huawei’s overall AI strategy,” Wang said. “We will help boost the fundamental of China’s computing power and offer the world a new option with our cluster-based SuperPod technology.”
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The SuperPod connectivity tech will soon allow more than 100,000 Ascend chips in a cluster, enabling faster data transmission via Huawei’s UnifiedBus networking protocol. The Shenzhen-based company says its adaptations and networking can make up for shortcomings in single-chip performance relative to the likes of Nvidia.
Already, Huawei has been making inroads at home and beyond. DeepSeek is planning to deploy at least 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT chips at a data center it’s building in Inner Mongolia to operate its models, though Huawei’s not yet able to fulfill such a large order due to production constraints. Huawei is also exploring foreign markets including Malaysia and Egypt, Bloomberg News has reported.
The company now has a bigger AI chip market share than Nvidia in China, and its gap with the US chipmaker on the software front is also narrowing, company executives said in a media briefing in Shanghai. Huawei’s progress in software could make its chips more appealing to domestic AI companies when it comes to training their cutting-edge models.
Huawei is testing its AI chips in limited foreign markets, deputy chairman Eric Xu told reporters, while it’s prioritizing Chinese customers at a time of limited manufacturing output that’s not enough for domestic demand. Xu said the company doesn’t yet have a broad global expansion plan due to this tight supply, and it’s only engaging with overseas customers who urgently need an alternative AI chip option.
The Chinese telecom-to-smartphone firm is spearheading Beijing’s drive for self-sufficiency in critical technologies in the face of yearslong US restrictions aimed at crippling China’s chipmaking ambition.
It is also leading a Beijing-backed campaign to export the Chinese technology stack abroad at a time when the world’s two superpowers are vying for geopolitical dominance everywhere.
Ascend 960 series will succeed Huawei’s current Ascend 950 family of AI accelerators, of which the 950DT favored by DeepSeek is equipped with faster, higher-capacity memory for demanding AI inference workloads. Another upgraded iteration, Ascend 970, is already planned for 2028, the company previously announced. On Thursday, Wang said Huawei will launch Ascend 980 in 2029. Each new generation of chips will roughly double the amount of computing power of its predecessor.
Wang also touted Huawei’s nascent optics technology, which enables faster data transmission between AI chips and servers. The company is set to ship its first near-packaged optics modules in the coming quarters, he said. NPO speeds up data transmission compared to existing pluggable optic modules and they also help ensure data integrity.
But Huawei’s AI chips are trailing Nvidia’s top-notch offerings. Top Chinese AI labs like DeepSeek are still largely relying on the US company’s chips for training their models, which they then operate using more domestic semiconductors, underscoring the challenge Beijing faces to wean itself completely off western technology. At the same time, Nvidia’s silicon is still finding its way into China via smuggling, American and Asian authorities have alleged.
Morgan Stanley estimates China’s AI computing market could reach 646 billion yuan ($96 billion) by 2030. Nvidia’s advanced Blackwell processors are not directly available in China. Huawei recently raised pricing for the Ascend 950DT chip by 60%, citing tight component supply in communications with customers.
On Thursday, Xu said that Huawei expects “a lot of” Chinese models will be trained on Ascend chips without providing further details. He acknowledged that manufacturing bottlenecks continue to persist, and said that China will only catch up with overall demand for AI hardware, including optical components and memory chips, by 2030.
To overcome its disadvantages, Huawei has been trying to come up with innovative ways, including the recently announced LogicFolding technique, to improve its chip technology without the best gear.
Xu highlighted the need for China and Huawei to continue driving self-sufficiency in critical technologies, saying the Chinese people would not accept a situation in which their fate is determined by others, a reference to US chip curbs.
“Now we can make our own chips, and even if they are inferior, at least we are going down the path of solving those challenges and not having to worry every single day,” Xu told reporters.
Huawei is also making some progress on other fronts. Ascend 950 chips are the first Huawei AI accelerators powered by memory chips it designs in-house, though the company has provided little production details.
The Shenzhen electronics giant and other Chinese AI chipmakers have been cut off from the latest AI memory products from South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. as well as US-based Micron Technology Inc. as part of US export controls.
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