NVIDIA AI Chip Shipments in China Plunge 44%

According to IDC, NVIDIA's share of China's data center AI chip market fell to 34% in the first half of 2026, as U.S. export controls restricted the availability of its products and domestic competitors, led by Huawei, expanded their market presence.

IDC data shows that NVIDIA shipped 678,000 AI accelerators in China from January to June 2026, a 44% year-over-year decline. AI accelerators are specialized chips designed to train and run artificial intelligence models.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly criticized U.S. export restrictions, arguing that the policies risk handing a $50 billion AI chip market to Chinese manufacturers.

Huawei shipped 572,000 AI accelerators during the same period, up approximately 90% from more than 300,000 units a year earlier. This gave the company a 28% share of China's AI accelerator market. According to IDC, nine of the 11 Chinese chipmakers it tracks recorded year-over-year shipment growth.

China's total AI accelerator shipments reached 2.008 million units in the first half of 2026. GPU shipments declined 26% to 991,000 units, while shipments of other AI accelerators increased by nearly 80% to 1.016 million units, surpassing GPUs for the first time in the reported period. These alternative accelerators are designed for specific AI workloads, including running trained models.

IDC noted that competition in China's AI chip market is increasingly shifting from individual chip performance to system-level capabilities, particularly the ability of chips to work together efficiently in large-scale computing clusters.

Looking ahead, IDC forecasts that China's total AI accelerator shipments will grow by 19% in 2026, even as GPU shipments are expected to decline by 9%.