Huawei has emerged as a major supplier of artificial intelligence chips in China after Washington imposed restrictions on exporting advanced Nvidia processors.
The self-developed 910B Ascend chips by the Chinese company have been distributed across various industries nationwide through artificial intelligence boxes. These boxes are versatile devices that combine AI chips, industry-specific algorithms, and pre-trained large-scale AI models.
Huawei’s chips have become widely used in these Chinese devices, leading the company to achieve significant success in a market previously dominated by Nvidia.
Nvidia designed low-quality chips specifically for customers in China after the US imposed export restrictions in October on shipments of its advanced processors A800, H800, and L40S to the country.
Ascend chips from Huawei have proven to be a challenge to Nvidia in its third-largest market in terms of size.
Earlier this month, CEO Jensen Huang admitted that the US company is facing significant challenges in the Chinese market.
Huawei has refused to disclose sales figures for its AI chips, but the company’s computing business head, Zhang Dixuan, confirmed in a speech this month that the Ascend ecosystem currently includes 40 hardware partners, 1600 software partners, and 2900 AI application solution partners.
Huawei is driving a campaign to promote local employment in China through its advanced technological capabilities. The AI box offers a ready-to-use solution for enterprises, enabling them to reduce costs and focus on improving large-scale service models.
Chinese companies are leveraging Huawei chips in producing AI boxes to meet the growing demand for AI technology across various industries, from telecommunications to healthcare and finance.
Before being added to the US trade blacklist in April, Tianjin Sitonholy, the main distributor of Nvidia in China, launched an AI box containing Huawei graphics processors and software developed by the Chinese company Thunder Software.
Chinese AI startup SenseTime expects a rise in sales of its smart technology this year due to strong demand for AI generation boxes priced between $40,000 and $275,850.
Locally-manufactured chips are readily available in the market, including products from Huawei, Cambricon, and Perlin.
AI investment boxes are expected to be essential for companies in China, with local companies led by Huawei expected to dominate the market.
In July, AI boxes in China received a strong boost when Huawei unveiled a language model training solution targeting Chinese clients in collaboration with local companies like ModelBest, Zhipu AI, iFlyTek, and CloudWalk.
iFlyTek introduced the AI box Spark Number 1 AI in August, powered by Huawei’s Ascend chips, capable of supporting a wide range of AI applications and model training effectively.
The speed of Huawei’s rise in the Chinese AI chip market depends on how quickly production can be increased.
Huawei plans to allocate more resources to AI chips this year, aiming to establish an advanced position in the Chinese market compared to Nvidia.
