Data from an IDC report reviewed by a news outlet showed Nvidia holding roughly a third of China's data-centre AI chip market during the opening six months of 2026, a position shaped by supply constraints tied to export restrictions and by advancing competition from domestic producers, with Huawei at the forefront.

According to IDC figures, the roughly 678,000 AI accelerators that Nvidia delivered into the Chinese market across the first half of the year represented a 44 percent drop from the comparable period twelve months prior. Dedicated silicon designed specifically for building and operating AI models falls under the category of AI accelerators.

Export controls put in place by the United States now bar Nvidia from offering its top-tier AI processors to buyers in China, narrowing the portfolio of products the chipmaker is permitted to move through that market. Homegrown alternatives have received active backing from Chinese authorities, while firms operating in the country now face an approval process before bringing in compliant Nvidia chips from abroad.

On multiple occasions, Jensen Huang, who leads Nvidia, has taken aim at the export restrictions put in place by the administration, arguing that the curbs have opened the door for Huawei to capture a Chinese AI chip market worth around $50 billion that would otherwise have been accessible to a domestic company.

No breakdown of which Nvidia products contributed to the 34% market share figure was provided by IDC, leaving open the question of whether advanced chips like the B200 and B300 — both subject to export restrictions that have not prevented their movement into China through unofficial channels — were counted in that total. No comment was provided by Nvidia when the outlet sought a response.

According to IDC data, Huawei's AI accelerator output reached 572,000 units — nearly double the 300,000-plus recorded the previous year — translating into a 28% portion of the broader market. Rounding out the competitive picture, T-Head — the chip-design arm of Alibaba — accounted for a 7% portion, while Cambricon captured 5%, Baidu's Kunlunxin unit drew 4%, and Hygon registered a 3% share.

Out of 11 domestic chip manufacturers monitored by IDC, nine posted year-over-year gains in units dispatched.

Across the opening two quarters of the year, the number of AI accelerator units dispatched globally topped 2.008 million. According to IDC, GPU deliveries into mainland China — where authorised inventory remained constrained — dropped by 26 percent, bringing total units received down to 991,000.

Volume figures for alternative AI accelerator hardware climbed by roughly 80 percent, reaching just over one million units and pulling ahead of GPUs on a unit-count basis. Processors built around narrow AI functions — executing pre-trained models among them — fall within this grouping.

Four vendors — Huawei, T-Head, Kunlunxin, and Cambricon — held a combined share of 95 percent within the non-GPU hardware category, a portion of the market that IDC noted had drawn uptake from government bodies, internet firms, and telecoms operators.

According to IDC, the battleground among chipmakers has moved beyond raw processor performance toward broader system-level attributes — particularly how effectively individual chips integrate and operate within larger computing clusters.

Accelerator hardware bound for China is forecast by IDC to post a 19% volume gain across the current year, even as graphics processor unit deliveries contract by 9%.