Huawei’s AI Chip Challenge: Can the Ascend 910D Rival Nvidia’s H100?

China’s tech giant Huawei is once again making global headlines, not for its smartphones or telecom equipment, but for its ambitious leap into the world of artificial intelligence hardware. In a bold move that reflects both technological determination and geopolitical defiance, Huawei is preparing to launch a high-performance AI chip—the Ascend 910D. This chip is being positioned as a direct competitor to Nvidia’s powerful H100, which currently dominates the AI training chip market.

This development comes at a time when the U.S. continues to enforce strict export controls on advanced semiconductors and chip-making tools to China. Despite being blacklisted by the U.S. government since 2019, Huawei has steadily advanced in chip innovation, most recently with its Mate 60 smartphone featuring a domestically manufactured processor. The Ascend 910D is the company’s next major milestone, and it signals China’s broader push toward technological self-sufficiency in strategic sectors like AI and semiconductors.

Huawei’s new chip integrates cutting-edge packaging technologies that combine multiple silicon dies, offering improved performance and power efficiency. It’s expected to consume more power than Nvidia’s H100 while reportedly achieving similar—or even superior—computing output, especially when deployed at scale within China’s tightly controlled AI ecosystem.

Summary: Huawei’s Rising Bet in AI Semiconductors

Huawei is developing the Ascend 910D AI chip, set to compete with Nvidia’s H100.
The chip will use advanced packaging techniques to improve performance and energy efficiency.
Initial testing samples of the 910D are expected by late May, with multiple Chinese tech firms already enlisted for evaluation.
The move highlights China’s strategic push for chip independence, in the face of U.S. trade restrictions.
The U.S. government has tightened export rules, recently restricting Nvidia’s H20 chip in China.
Huawei continues to expand its AI chip ecosystem, shipping hundreds of thousands of 910B and 910C chips in 2025.

– The 910C previously fell short of

Despite sanctions, Huawei remains pivotal in China’s AI ecosystem, supplying chips to state-owned firms and developers like ByteDance.
Chinese analysts believe large-scale deployment may compensate for performance gaps with Western chips.
The U.S. ban on Huawei is rooted in national security concerns, including allegations of espionage and violation of sanctions.
The FCC officially designated Huawei a national security threat in 2020, blocking federal funds from being used to purchase its equipment.
Despite losing access to major foundries like TSMC, Huawei appears undeterred in scaling up local manufacturing.
The domestic demand in China for homegrown AI chips is growing, especially after the latest U.S. export restrictions.
The 910D may serve not only technological purposes but political ones, symbolizing resistance to Western tech dominance.
Advanced Chinese chipmakers like Cambricon are also rising, though Huawei’s scale and government backing set it apart.
The AI arms race is increasingly polarized, with clear lines drawn between U.S.-aligned and Chinese-led technological ecosystems.

What Undercode Say: Huawei’s AI Chip Push Is More Than Just Silicon

Huawei’s development of the Ascend 910D is not just an engineering milestone—it’s a geopolitical message. By targeting Nvidia’s H100, Huawei is aiming squarely at the heart of the AI hardware hierarchy, dominated by U.S. firms. And it’s doing so under extraordinary constraints: export controls, limited access to the latest manufacturing technologies, and international scrutiny.

From a technical standpoint, the 910D appears to offer competitive features, such as multi-die packaging for increased computational density and better power efficiency under certain conditions. Yet there’s a critical distinction—performance parity in lab tests doesn’t necessarily translate to real-world supremacy. Nvidia’s H100, for instance, benefits not only from raw performance but also from mature software stacks, industry partnerships, and optimized data center integration.

Still, Huawei has a strategic edge in its domestic market. Beijing has incentivized AI developers to shift toward domestic components. This kind of top-down policy direction can massively distort market dynamics—companies may favor local chips not because they’re better but because they’re mandated or subsidized. In China’s AI sector, where state-owned firms dominate, this is a significant competitive lever.

Another analytical layer concerns deployment scale. While a single Nvidia H100 might outperform a single Ascend 910D, deploying thousands of Huawei chips within optimized Chinese server clusters might narrow the gap considerably. Chinese AI firms, accustomed to working within constraints, are known for their adaptability and optimization under pressure.

Let’s also not ignore timing. With Nvidia’s H20 now banned for sale in China, there’s a real vacuum. Huawei is aggressively filling that void, and its pipeline—shipping over 800,000 earlier-generation chips this year alone—suggests strong operational momentum.

There are caveats. Huawei still faces challenges in semiconductor fabrication. Without access to extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, it’s unlikely the 910D is fabricated on the same ultra-advanced nodes as Nvidia’s latest chips. This could affect power efficiency, heat management, and long-term scalability.

However, Huawei may not need to match Nvidia node-for-node. If China’s domestic ecosystem is tightly coupled with Huawei’s chip roadmap, performance trade-offs can be mitigated by ecosystem control, volume, and software adaptation.

In essence, Huawei is shaping an AI hardware strategy tailored for a semi-closed environment—where it can dominate not just through innovation, but through policy alignment, manufacturing scale, and political necessity.

Fact Checker Results

Huawei is confirmed to be developing the Ascend 910D chip, according to credible reports from the Wall Street Journal and Chinese tech sources.
The chip’s goal to match Nvidia’s H100 is clearly stated in multiple independent sources, though performance parity remains speculative until real-world benchmarks emerge.
Huawei remains under U.S. trade restrictions, including the 2020 FCC designation as a national security threat, which remains in effect today.