Nvidia’s share of China’s AI chip market falls to 34% as Huawei closes in

Nvidia still sells more AI chips in China than anyone else. It just sells a lot fewer of them than it used to. The company’s share of China’s data-center AI chip market dropped to 34% in the first half of 2026, according to an IDC report highlighted by Reuters on October 13. Huawei, meanwhile, climbed to 28%. A market Nvidia once treated as home turf is starting to look like a contested border. The numbers behind the slide Nvidia shipped 678,000 units into China during the first half of 2026. That figure represents a 44% drop from the same period a year earlier. The research attributes much of that decline to US export controls on advanced AI chips. Washington has restricted which Nvidia products can legally reach Chinese buyers. Huawei moved in the opposite direction. The Chinese tech giant delivered 572,000 units in the period, up from just over 300,000 units a year before. That growth pushed its market share to 28%, leaving it about six percentage points behind Nvidia. Total shipments across China’s AI accelerator market reached 2.008 million units in the first half of 2026. Huawei was not the only domestic player gaining. IDC tracks eleven Chinese vendors, and nine of them repo...