Huawei shipped 572,000 AI chips in China in six months, 106,000 fewer than Nvidia

The share figures hide where the units went, or rather they hide how far. Nvidia's 678,000 units were 44% below the prior-year period ^[6], so its first half of 2025 was near 1.21 million and the loss about 533,000 units ^[12][13]. Huawei delivered 572,000 against just over 300,000, a gain of at most 272,000 ^[7][14]. That covers about half of Nvidia's loss ^[15].

The market grew. Backing the prior year out of IDC's growth rates for GPUs (down 26% to 991,000) and non-GPU accelerators (up nearly 80% to 1.016 million) gives about 1.90 million units, so the 2.008 million total is roughly 5% bigger ^{[11][10][8][16][17]}. Every vendor other than Nvidia and Huawei, taken together, added roughly 365,000 units, more than Huawei did ^[18].

Cause is only partly established. China Money Network's excerpt attributes the 34% to US export restrictions and then stops at a paywall after "US export restrictions and" ^[1]. Cryptobriefing says the IDC research attributes much of the decline to export controls ^[4], and its own background section adds Beijing's push toward domestic AI chip production as a second force behind Huawei ^[24].

A model that scales Nvidia's China revenue by the 44% unit drop assumes the average selling price held. The Cryptobriefing write-up reports units and shares and does not include revenue or prices. It does note that Washington has restricted which Nvidia products can legally reach Chinese buyers ^[5]. If the permitted mix changed, revenue fell by a different percentage than units did. A model still carrying last year's Nvidia volume books about 533,000 units that were not shipped ^[13].

We think the ordering at the top is the least stable number here. The gap between the two is 106,000 units ^[19], well under the 272,000 Huawei added year on year ^[14], and Cryptobriefing says the leaderboard "could plausibly flip if current trends continue" ^[25]. That is one half-year of data. The view is wrong if Nvidia's second-half units hold at 678,000 or better, if Huawei's growth stalls, or if Washington changes which Nvidia products it lets through; any of the three would keep Nvidia ahead.

The GPU crossover is thinner. Non-GPU parts outsold GPUs by 25,000 units, 1.2% of a 2.008 million market ^[20], and Cryptobriefing itself asks whether the first half was a narrow crossover ^[26].