GoKawiilChinese AI accelerators are set to capture 90% of the country's domestic market as U.S. export controls and Beijing mandates push American-made hardware from AMD and Nvidia out of the market, according to a new report by TrendForce. Cambricon and Huawei are expected to be the biggest beneficiaries of the shift, according to DigiTimes. Yet, the big question is whether Chinese vendors can ship enough AI accelerators to satisfy demand.
China on track for AI accelerator self-sufficiency
Nvidia commanded 66% of China's AI accelerator market in 2024, but its share dropped to 40% in 2025 and was on track to drop to 8% in 2026, according to estimates made by Bernstein investment bank earlier this year. Considering the fact that Nvidia did not officially ship any new accelerators to Chinese clients in the first half of the year, Nvidia's chief executive Jensen Huang said in May that his company's market share in the PRC was 'zero.' Of course, some Nvidia GPUs make it to China 'unofficially' as local companies are too dependent on Nvidia's CUDA and high-end AI accelerators. Still, it is safe to say that the bulk of new deployments in the PRC are based on hardware designed and produced domestically.
(Image credit: Nvidia)
China's total available market of AI accelerators topped 4 million units in 2025, according to numbers published by Guancha.cn. Last year, 2.2 million Nvidia AI GPUs made it to the Chinese market, and while Nvidia's market share shrank to 55%, it still significantly outperformed its closest rival, Huawei, which shipped 812,000 AI accelerators and commanded 20.3% of the market.
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Shipments by other players were by far lower: Alibaba's T-Head produced 265,000 AI accelerators, followed by AMD with 160,000. Cambricon and Kunlunxin only supplied around 116,000 AI processors each, whereas others shipped fewer than 100,000 units.
Swipe to scroll horizontally AI accelerators market shares in 2025, data by TrendForce Company Shipment (10K units) Market Share NVIDIA 220 55.0% Huawei 81.2 20.3% T-Head 26.5 6.6% AMD 16 4.0% Kunlunxin 11.6 2.9% Cambricon 11.6 2.9% Hygon 8.3 2.1% MetaX 6.6 1.7% Iluvatar CoreX 4.9 1.2% Other 13.3 3.0% TOTAL 400 ~100%
"This year, the Chinese government has actively encouraged the adoption of domestic AI chips," the report from TrendForce reads. "This policy push will likely provide priority support to high-potential domestic players, allowing them to substantially expand their market share in China's high-end AI server market. At the same time, the domestic ecosystem is maturing in key areas such as advanced foundry nodes, advanced packaging, and thermal management."
The firm now expects shipments of high-end AI processors developed by Chinese companies to increase by more than 83% year-over-year in 2026 as domestic production capacity and deployments expand. As a result, its analysts project domestic AI accelerators to capture nearly 90% of sales (up from 45% last year), which means that foreign suppliers like AMD and Nvidia will be left with roughly 10%. This latest projection represents a major revision from the research firm's December 2025 outlook, which estimated that Chinese processors would account for approximately 50% of China’s high-end AI chip market in 2026.
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