A 44% drop in six months
Nvidia’s share of China’s market for data-centre AI chips fell to 34% in the first half of 2026, according to IDC figures reported by Reuters. The company shipped 678,000 AI accelerators into China between January and June, down 44% from the same period a year earlier.
The fall is not a demand problem. China’s total AI-accelerator shipments reached 2.008 million units over the half, and IDC expects them to grow 19% across the full year. What has changed is who supplies them, under US export controls that limit which Nvidia parts can legally reach mainland customers.
Huawei’s 572,000
Huawei shipped 572,000 AI accelerators in the half, up from more than 300,000 a year earlier, taking 28% of the overall market — six points behind Nvidia. Behind the two leaders, Alibaba’s chip-design unit T-Head held 7%, Cambricon 5%, Baidu’s Kunlunxin 4% and Hygon 3%. Nine of the eleven Chinese chipmakers IDC tracked increased shipments year on year.
Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang has said US export curbs forced the company to cede a $50bn Chinese AI chip market to Huawei. That is his characterisation rather than an IDC finding. Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
GPUs are no longer the bulk of it
The composition of the market shifted as well as its ownership. GPU shipments — the chips most used to train models — fell 26% to 991,000 units, as supplies approved for sale in mainland China stayed limited. Other AI accelerators rose nearly 80% to 1.016 million units and overtook GPUs by volume for the first half.
That segment is almost entirely domestic: Huawei, T-Head, Kunlunxin and Cambricon together accounted for 95% of China’s non-GPU AI chip shipments. IDC’s full-year forecast expects total accelerator shipments to grow 19% while GPU shipments fall 9%, which would widen the gap further.
What IDC did not say
One gap in the data matters for how the 34% should be read. IDC did not specify which Nvidia products make up that share, and did not say whether the figure includes the B200 and B300 — parts barred from export to China but which have reportedly been smuggled in. A share built on export-compliant hardware and a share that quietly includes restricted parts describe different markets.
The next checkpoint is IDC’s full-year data, which will show whether the 19% growth it forecasts arrives, and whether any of it goes to Nvidia.
