Huawei’s AI chip output projected at 4% of Nvidia’s by 2026

Huawei is doubling its AI chip production. It still won’t matter much on the global stage.

A Council on Foreign Relations analysis projects that Huawei’s AI compute output will amount to roughly 4% of Nvidia’s in 2026, even under the most aggressive production assumptions. That share is actually expected to shrink further, dropping to just 2% by 2027.

The numbers tell two very different stories

Zoom into China, and Huawei looks like a juggernaut. The company is on track to capture approximately 50% of the domestic AI chip market by 2026, according to the CFR report published in December 2025. Meanwhile, Bernstein Research estimates Nvidia’s share in China will crater from around 40% in 2025 to roughly 8% in 2026.

Zoom out to the global picture, and the story flips entirely. Huawei plans to produce around 600,000 Ascend 910C chips in 2026, which would double its 2025 production levels. Even with that ramp-up, Huawei’s total AI compute would represent less than 4% of what Nvidia ships.

Huawei’s projected AI chip revenue for 2026 sits at approximately $12 billion, up from an estimated $7.5 billion in 2025. But Nvidia generated over $130 billion in data center revenue in its fiscal year 2025.

Manufacturing bottlenecks aren’t going away

Huawei relies on SMIC, China’s most advanced chipmaker, for its manufacturing. SMIC still lacks access to extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment from ASML, the Dutch firm whose machines are essential for producing cutting-edge chips at scale. Without EUV, SMIC uses older deep ultraviolet (DUV) techniques with workarounds that reduce yields and limit performance.

Global HBM supply is dominated by SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron, all of which face restrictions on selling to Huawei. This shortage acts as a hard ceiling on how many high-performance AI chips Huawei can actually assemble, regardless of how many processor dies SMIC can stamp out.

The CFR analysis notes that Huawei’s upcoming Ascend 950 series, slated for 2026, is projected to be less powerful than its predecessor, the 910C. No Huawei chip matching or exceeding Nvidia’s H200-level specifications is expected until late 2027 or 2028, according to the analysis.

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