On February 25th, it was reported that NVIDIA, in a filing submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, for the first time identified Huawei as its primary competitor in several major categories including artificial intelligence chips.
While NVIDIA is traditionally associated with GPUs and Huawei with telecommunications, the two are increasingly competing in the era of artificial intelligence.
According to current reports, NVIDIA's identification of Huawei as its major competitor can be attributed to two main reasons:
Firstly, there is a significant shift in the global landscape of advanced process chips that drive AI technology.
NVIDIA stated in its report that Huawei competes with them in four out of five major business categories.
Huawei's capabilities in supplying GPUs, CPUs, and other chips used in AI are seen as competitive by NVIDIA.
Moreover, NVIDIA positions Huawei as a cloud service company capable of designing its own hardware and software to enhance AI computing.
NVIDIA stated, "Some of our competitors may have greater marketing, financial, distribution, and manufacturing resources than we do, and may be better able to adapt to changes in customer or technology needs."
Secondly, due to a series of export restrictions on AI chips imposed by the United States, NVIDIA is unable to export advanced chips to China, making Huawei's products an excellent alternative.
Analysts point out that Huawei's Ascend series AI chips, particularly the Ascend 910B released last year, are considered alternatives to NVIDIA's A100 chips in the Chinese market.
Previously, companies like Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba were important clients for NVIDIA. However, amidst increasing U.S. export controls on China, Chinese companies are beginning to reduce their reliance on U.S. technology. Last year, Baidu ordered 1600 Huawei 910B chips.
Analysts estimate the value of the AI chip market in China to be around $7 billion.
