Nvidia’s AI chip sales are stalling in China. Here’s who’s gaining market share

In the race between the U.S. and China to develop artificial intelligence, the battle over hardware and computing power is heating up as Chinese companies like Huawei overtake global industry leaders like Nvidia in their home market.Jensen Huang, the CEO of computer chip giant Nvidia, was mobbed by onlookers as he hit the streets for the “zhajiangmian” noodles while visiting Beijing during U.S. President Donald Trump’s May summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. But his celebrity status has not translated into success in selling Nvidia’s advanced chips in China.Controls imposed by Washington on exports of advanced technology due to national security concerns initially stalled sales of Nvidia’s advanced H200 AI chips there. By the time Huang won a reprieve, with Trump agreeing to their sale, Beijing had switched to encouraging use of domestically designed chips made by local rivals led by Huawei.Huang has acknowledged that the U.S. has lost its edge in China’s advanced AI chips market as Chinese competitors have become “giants.”“Well, we were in China for 30 years, and before the export control banned Nvidia out of China we had about 95% market share, and so we were competing just fine,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.“We have to have, number one, make sure that we have national security and that we protect our nation, but we also simultaneously should go and compete and grow our technology industry and maximize our exports,” he said. Among Chinese chipmakers, Huawei leads Since the U.S. in 2019 excluded Huawei, and later China in general, from buying some of the world’s most powerful computer chips and chipmaking machinery, Chinese semiconductor makers have rushed to become self-sufficient, developing their own chips and knowhow.Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia and its main rival AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, dominate in the U.S. AI chip sector and much of the