One-sentence summary
According to market research firm IDC (cited by Reuters on October 13, 2026), total China data-center AI accelerator shipments reached about 2.008 million units in H1 2026, with non-GPU accelerators at 1.016 million units surpassing GPU shipments of 991,000 units for the first time; NVIDIA shipped 678,000 units (down 44% year over year, 34% share) and Huawei shipped 572,000 units (28% share), with the gap narrowing from 31 percentage points a year earlier to 6 points.
Data Description
- Source: market research firm IDC report, cited by Reuters on October 13, 2026.
- Scope: China data-center AI accelerator market, January to June 2026.
- Definition: AI accelerators are specialized chips used to train and run AI models, covering both GPUs and non-GPU types (ASIC, FPGA, etc.).
Core Data
| vendor | Field meaning | Shipments (10k units) | YoY | Market share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | China data-center AI accelerator shipments | 200.8 | N/A | 100% |
| NVIDIA | NVIDIA AI accelerator shipments | 67.8 | -44% | 34% |
| Huawei | Huawei (Ascend) AI accelerator shipments | 57.2 | Nearly doubled | 28% |
| Alibaba | Alibaba T-Head AI accelerator shipments | N/A | N/A | 7% |
| Cambricon | Cambricon AI accelerator shipments | N/A | N/A | 5% |
| Non-GPU | ASIC/FPGA and other non-GPU accelerators | 101.6 | First time exceeding GPUs | 50.6% of total |
| GPU | GPU-type accelerators | 99.1 | N/A | 49.4% of total |
Field Description
- vendor: name of the vendor or category.
- Shipments: shipments from January to June 2026, in units of 10,000; N/A means the IDC report did not disclose the absolute value.
- YoY: change compared with the same period of 2025.
- Market share: share of the China data-center AI accelerator market by shipments.
- Non-GPU accelerators: specialized chips designed for specific tasks, such as ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) and FPGA (field-programmable gate array), offering higher energy efficiency in inference scenarios.
Data Sources & References
- Reuters (cited by C114): IDC report shows NVIDIA China AI chip share down to 34%, Huawei gap narrowed to 6 percentage points (October 13, 2026)link
- 36Kr: The 6-point gap between NVIDIA and Huawei: China's AI chip market shifts (October 14, 2026)link
- EET-China: IDC: NVIDIA China data-center AI chip share down to 34% in H1 2026, Huawei up to 28% (October 15, 2026)link