Nvidia’s share of China’s data-centre AI chip market has fallen to 34 per cent as export restrictions squeeze supplies and Huawei gains ground.
Beancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and divided by their shoe size, shown their working out to Reuters and figured out that Nvidia shipped 678,000 AI accelerators in China during the first half of 2026. That is a 44 per cent decline from the same period last year, giving domestic competitors plenty of room to expand.
Huawei shipped 572,000 accelerators, up from more than 300,000 in the same period last year, capturing 28 per cent of the market. The gap between the two companies stood at 106,000 units, although shipment counts alone cannot establish their relative computing performance.
Alibaba’s chip-design subsidiary T-Head took seven per cent, followed by Cambricon with five per cent and Baidu’s Kunlunxin with four per cent. Hygon held three per cent, while nine of the 11 Chinese chipmakers IDC tracked increased shipments from a year earlier.
China’s total AI accelerator shipments reached 2.008 million units between January and June, covering specialised processors used to train and run AI models. GPU shipments fell 26 per cent to 991,000 units as supplies eligible for sale in mainland China remained limited.
Shipments of other AI accelerators rose nearly 80 per cent to 1.016 million units, overtaking GPUs by volume. IDC expects total accelerator shipments to grow 19 per cent this year, even as GPU shipments fall nine per cent.
Washington’s export restrictions limit which Nvidia products Chinese customers can access, while Beijing encourages buyers to choose domestic alternatives. Chinese companies must seek approval to import Nvidia chips that comply with US restrictions, adding another bureaucratic hurdle to an already awkward purchasing process.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has repeatedly criticised the export curbs, arguing that Washington is handing China’s $50 billion AI chip market to Huawei. The latest figures give his complaints some ammunition, although Nvidia still leads the shipment rankings despite its shrinking share.
IDC did not identify which Nvidia products contributed to its market-share calculation, leaving an important qualification attached to the headline figures. It did not clarify whether the total included B200 and B300 accelerators, which are prohibited from export to China but have reportedly been smuggled there.
IDC says competition increasingly concerns how processors work together across computing clusters, extending the contest beyond individual chip performance. Huawei, T-Head, Kunlunxin and Cambricon accounted for 95 per cent of non-GPU shipments, with adoption spreading through government agencies, internet companies and telecoms providers.
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