Huawei Unveils Plans to Manufacture AI Chips to Rival Nvidia for the First Time
Huawei has lifted the veil on its long-secretive AI chip ambitions, announcing four new versions of its Ascend AI processors to be released over the next three years.
Speaking at the company’s annual Huawei Connect event in Shanghai, rotating chairman Eric Xu confirmed that the new lineup—Ascend 950 in 2026, Ascend 960 in 2027, and Ascend 970 in 2028—will mark Huawei’s boldest push yet to challenge Nvidia in the global AI hardware race.
The Ascend 950 will come powered by Huawei’s own high-bandwidth memory, a breakthrough that helps China overcome long-standing reliance on U.S. and South Korean suppliers.
Huawei also revealed its next-generation AI supercomputing clusters, Atlas 950 and Atlas 960, which can scale up to 15,488 Ascend chips, setting new benchmarks in computing power.
Industry analysts note that, in some metrics, Huawei’s approach may already surpass Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 system. The company’s new "super-node" architecture enables ultra-fast interconnection across massive chip networks, underscoring Huawei’s determination to lead China’s self-sufficiency in advanced semiconductors.
