NVIDIA shares are down by 5.6% today after a report shared that China's Huawei has started to prepare its new artificial intelligence chip for shipments after the latest round of US sanctions on the country. The Trump administration recently announced that NVIDIA would require a license to sell its H20 AI GPUs to China. The H20 was the highest-end NVIDIA chip available to China, and the restriction limits the ability of Chinese companies to access the latest AI technologies for their software ecosystem. The chip that Huawei plans to ship is the Ascend 910C, a design upgrade over its predecessor instead of being a new device, says the report.
Huawei's Ascend 9100C Is Comparable To NVIDIA's H100, Say Sources
NVIDIA's stock has been under consistent pressure this year since the DeepSeek selloff wiped off nearly $600 billion in market value within a day. The latest dip came last week after the Trump administration announced that it would require an export control license for sales of the H20 AI GPU to China. The H20 was the latest NVIDIA AI chip that Chinese firms could order, and with domestic alternatives from Huawei being unable to match its performance, it was heavily demanded in the country.
After the US government's announcement, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stressed that his firm would develop a new chip that complies with the latest rules; however, while NVIDIA seeks to refine its products once again, a report from Reuters shares that Huawei is preparing to ship its latest Ascend 910C AI chip after the new US export control rules.
According to the sources, the 910C is capable of meeting the performance of NVIDIA's H100 AI GPUs. The report isn't the first time that the chip has surfaced in the discourse surrounding domestic Chinese AI chips. In March, a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) outlined that China could manufacture one million of these GPUs. The report outlined that the 910C is made by combining two 910Bs (a smaller variant), and it added that the one million figure was contingent on China being able to achieve 100% defect-free production.
Reuters' sources corroborate the 910C's production process, and as per the CSIS, the Ascend 910B and 910C are manufactured on dies by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). TSMC has asserted that its last shipments to Huawei were in September 2020, but the US government is investigating products by the Chinese firm Sophia which are suspected to have been made by TSMC but made their way to Huawei.
As per CSIS' sources, TSMC manufactured more than two million Ascend 910B dies, and with one 910C integrating two 910Bs, Huawei can theoretically produce one million 910Cs. However, chip integration is a complex process that typically leads to some wastage. China's domestic chip manufacturer, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), has struggled to overcome US restrictions and is widely believed to be stuck on the older 7-nanometer semiconductor manufacturing technology.
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
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