Huawei isn’t waiting around for the AI chip race to slow down. At a company event in Shanghai on Thursday, rotating chairman David Wang confirmed that two new AI chips are on the way in 2027, the 960DT and the Ascend 960PR, as the company keeps expanding its AI computing business to go after Nvidia, as Reuters reported. The 960DT is expected in the first quarter of 2027, followed by the Ascend 960PR in the third quarter.
Why does connecting chips matter so much?
Here’s the thing about AI workloads: even the most powerful single chip usually can’t handle the biggest AI programs on its own. That’s why Huawei is leaning so heavily on its UnifiedBus technology, which strings together huge numbers of AI chips so they can operate as a single, much larger computing system.
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Wang said Huawei has already built 11 semiconductors around UnifiedBus, and the company’s largest connected setups, known as superclusters, can reportedly handle up to a million AI processors working together. On a smaller scale, Huawei says it has already delivered over 1,000 of these linked systems, called supernodes, to more than 370 customers worldwide. Wang stopped short of saying how many chips a single supernode can hold, who any of the customers are, or how the shipment numbers break down.
Can Huawei actually catch up to Nvidia?
US export controls have limited China’s access to the most advanced chips and manufacturing equipment, and that’s actually worked out well for Huawei, pushing it to the front of China’s domestic AI chip supply. Still, Nvidia remains the one to beat, with its chips and software used by developers everywhere.
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Hardware alone won’t close that gap, though. Huawei also needs developers actually building on its chips, and Wang shared that its AI chip ecosystem currently counts 5,270 monthly active developers. That number will need to keep climbing if Huawei wants to be seen as a real Nvidia alternative and not just a backup option.
Either way, the US and China’s chip rivalry shows no signs of slowing down, and Huawei just made it clear it intends to be a major part of it straight through 2027.