There you have it! Nvidia's share of China's AI accelerator market fell to 34% in the first half …
October 16, 2026 · 0 likes · 0 comments
China Threat AI
There you have it! Nvidia's share of China's AI accelerator market fell to 34% in the first half of 2026, according to IDC data. Huawei climbed to 28%.
Nvidia shipped about 678,000 units in China. Huawei shipped 572,000. Total market: roughly 2 million. Nvidia's China shipments dropped 44% from a year earlier.
Huawei is now within six points of Nvidia. In China. In AI chips.
Now the opinion part, and I'll label it as such.
University of Illinois professor Rakesh Kumar warned in Fortune back in 2022, days before the Biden export controls dropped, that they would not work. His line: "You can't win an important race by hoping to trip your opponent... A far better strategy is to run faster."
Today he says: "I'm not going to say 'I told you so.' But it really is 'I told you so.'"
His argument: most AI uses, robotics, smart cameras, don't need the most advanced silicon, and cutting China off gave Beijing every reason to build its own ecosystem.
The data points that fit his story (none of them prove causation, per the reporting):
• Huawei says it shipped 100M+ devices on its own Kirin chips since 2023.
• DeepSeek and Z.ai adapted their flagship models to run on Huawei Ascend.
• Meituan says it trained a 1.6 trillion parameter model entirely on domestic chips.
• CXMT claims a new "4F²" server memory chip before year-end. Unverified. Micron still closed down 4% and SK Hynix fell 10% on the claim alone.
Here's where I land.
Kumar is half right. "Run faster" is exactly correct. We should be out-building, out-shipping and out-deploying China every single day.
But the answer is NOT to hand the CCP our best chips. EUV is still the choke point. China still depends on foreign tools for advanced nodes. Morningstar expects a meaningful gap between CXMT's unveiling and viable yields. The controls bite where it counts.
The real failure is enforcement. U.S. authorities believe billions of dollars of Nvidia chips have been smuggled into China through third countries. A control you don't enforce is a suggestion.
Taiwan just said it plans to make shipping restricted AI chips to China a criminal offense. No timeline yet. Today it isn't a crime there on its own.
Run faster AND lock the door. Both. Not one or the other.
The scoreboard comes before year-end: if CXMT ships at commercial yields, Kumar gets his strongest evidence yet. If it slips, the gap is real.
Full story on Unbiased Headlines:
https://lnkd.in/e-fZBCkD
Nvidia shipped about 678,000 units in China. Huawei shipped 572,000. Total market: roughly 2 million. Nvidia's China shipments dropped 44% from a year earlier.
Huawei is now within six points of Nvidia. In China. In AI chips.
Now the opinion part, and I'll label it as such.
University of Illinois professor Rakesh Kumar warned in Fortune back in 2022, days before the Biden export controls dropped, that they would not work. His line: "You can't win an important race by hoping to trip your opponent... A far better strategy is to run faster."
Today he says: "I'm not going to say 'I told you so.' But it really is 'I told you so.'"
His argument: most AI uses, robotics, smart cameras, don't need the most advanced silicon, and cutting China off gave Beijing every reason to build its own ecosystem.
The data points that fit his story (none of them prove causation, per the reporting):
• Huawei says it shipped 100M+ devices on its own Kirin chips since 2023.
• DeepSeek and Z.ai adapted their flagship models to run on Huawei Ascend.
• Meituan says it trained a 1.6 trillion parameter model entirely on domestic chips.
• CXMT claims a new "4F²" server memory chip before year-end. Unverified. Micron still closed down 4% and SK Hynix fell 10% on the claim alone.
Here's where I land.
Kumar is half right. "Run faster" is exactly correct. We should be out-building, out-shipping and out-deploying China every single day.
But the answer is NOT to hand the CCP our best chips. EUV is still the choke point. China still depends on foreign tools for advanced nodes. Morningstar expects a meaningful gap between CXMT's unveiling and viable yields. The controls bite where it counts.
The real failure is enforcement. U.S. authorities believe billions of dollars of Nvidia chips have been smuggled into China through third countries. A control you don't enforce is a suggestion.
Taiwan just said it plans to make shipping restricted AI chips to China a criminal offense. No timeline yet. Today it isn't a crime there on its own.
Run faster AND lock the door. Both. Not one or the other.
The scoreboard comes before year-end: if CXMT ships at commercial yields, Kumar gets his strongest evidence yet. If it slips, the gap is real.
Full story on Unbiased Headlines:
https://lnkd.in/e-fZBCkD