Nvidia’s share of China’s AI chip market fell to 34% in the first half of 2026 as Huawei gained, IDC data shows

What the data shows

Nvidia held 34% of China’s market for data centre AI chips in the first half of 2026, according to an IDC report cited by Reuters.¹ Nvidia shipped 678,000 AI accelerators in China between January and June, down 44% from a year earlier.¹ Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment.¹

Huawei shipped 572,000 accelerators, up from over 300,000 a year earlier, for a 28% share.¹ Alibaba’s T-Head had 7%, Cambricon 5%, Baidu’s Kunlunxin 4% and Hygon 3%.¹

How fast it changed

For all of 2025, Reuters reported in April that IDC put Nvidia’s share at about 55%, with Chinese vendors at 41% combined.² The two reports are separate IDC releases with different time periods, so the figures are not a direct like-for-like comparison.

A shift away from GPUs

Total AI accelerator shipments in China reached about 2.008 million units in the first half.¹ GPU shipments fell 26% to 991,000, while other AI chips, built for specific jobs such as running trained models, rose nearly 80% to 1.016 million and overtook GPUs by volume.¹ Huawei, T-Head, Kunlunxin and Cambricon held 95% of that non-GPU segment.¹

Why it is happening

The US restricts China’s access to Nvidia’s most powerful chips, and Beijing requires Chinese companies to get approval to import Nvidia chips that do comply.¹ Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has said export curbs forced Nvidia to give up much of China’s AI chip market to Huawei.¹

What comes next

IDC expects total AI accelerator shipments in China to grow 19% this year, while GPU shipments fall 9%.¹