Nvidia's share of China's AI chip market has fallen to 34% as Huawei closes the gap.
Nvidia's share of China's data-center AI accelerator market fell to 34% in the first half of 2026, as US export controls cut its shipments by 44% year on year. Over the same period, Huawei nearly doubled its shipments to reach 28%, according to IDC data reported by Reuters.
US export controls and Beijing's push for domestic chips are reshaping the market, which is also shifting from GPUs toward purpose-built non-GPU accelerators. For Nvidia, the trend points to a shrinking foothold in a market that Jensen Huang values at $50 billion.
Nvidia shipped 678,000 AI accelerators in China between January and June, down 44% from the same period in 2025, according to IDC data cited by Reuters. Huawei increased its shipments from about 300,000 units to 572,000 over the same period, lifting its market share to 28% and narrowing Nvidia's lead to six percentage points.
Other Chinese chipmakers also hold part of the market. Alibaba's chip-design arm T-Head holds 7%, followed by Cambricon at 5%, Baidu's Kunlunxin at 4% and Hygon at 3%. IDC surveyed 11 Chinese chipmakers, nine of which increased shipments over the past year.
**Why Nvidia lost ground**
US restrictions have prevented Nvidia from selling its most advanced AI chips to China, and IDC directly links the company's declining market share to these limitations. Beijing is also encouraging the use of domestic chips and requires Chinese firms to obtain approval before importing Nvidia processors that meet US export rules. Chinese buyers have largely shunned the limited range of Nvidia chips that Washington has approved for sale.
**The market is moving past GPUs**
China shipped about 2.008 million AI accelerators in the first half of the year, but the composition of that mix has shifted. GPU shipments fell 26% to 991,000 units, while shipments of non-GPU accelerators, designed for specific AI workloads such as inference, surged about 80% to roughly 1.016 million.
Four Chinese companies, Huawei, T-Head, Kunlunxin and Cambricon, hold 95% of the non-GPU segment, according to IDC. Their customers are mostly government agencies, internet companies and large telecom operators.
IDC forecasts that GPU shipments in China will decline 9% for the full year, even though total accelerator shipments are expected to rise 19%, driven by demand for non-GPU chips. The firm says competition is increasingly shifting from the performance of individual chips to how efficiently large clusters of interconnected chips operate as a single system.