What to know about Nvidia's Chinese competitors as Trump opens up the market
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President Trump is granting China access to more of Nvidia's advanced AI chips, he announced this week, a partial win for Nvidia which has lobbied against U.S. export restrictions first put in place in late 2022.
The big picture: Nvidia warns that blocking its sales has accelerated China's domestic chipmaking push — creating new global rivals and threatening the U.S. lead in the AI race.
Here's what to know about the competition
Catch up quick: The U.S. has approved Nvidia's No. 2 chip, the H200, for sale in China, with Washington taking a 25% cut of future sales, the president said on Monday.
- The H200 is a significant upgrade from Nvidia's H20, the chip previously allowed under export rules.
- Nvidia's latest-generation Blackwell chips remain barred from China. The company says Blackwell offers 30× the performance of the H200, per the nonpartisan think tank Institute for Progress.
Huawei chips
Huawei is Nvidia's biggest competitor in China.
- It produces what's believed to be the country's most advanced chip, the Ascend 910C, which lags far behind the H200 in compute and memory bandwidth, the IFP says.
- But in the context of what's legally available, Huawei's older 910B more than doubles the total processing performance of Nvidia's restricted H20, multiple outlets reported from a July Bernstein Research report.
- Huawei has rapidly built out clustered AI systems, and U.S. officials now believe these systems can rival Nvidia's at the platform level.
Baidu, other competitors
China tech giant Baidu has also emerged as a major player.
- The company owns a majority stake in Kunlunxin, whose Kunlun AI chip secured about $139 million from China Mobile.
- Baidu recently announced a five-year roadmap for its next-generation Kunlun chips, beginning with the M100 in 2026 and M300 in 2027, CNBC reported.
- Baidu's stock is up 50% year-to-date.
Cambricon Technologies shares have surged nearly 500% in the last year, surging in August when Beijing urged local companies to avoid using Nvidia's H20 processors, particularly for government-related purposes, Bloomberg reported.
- Cambricon plans to triple domestic AI chip production in 2026, according to Bloomberg.
E-commerce giant Alibaba is also developing its next-generation AI chip, multiple outlets reported in August.
State of play
Nvidia is still the clear leader of the pack in terms of chip power.
Yes, but: Trump's decision to allow H200 sales reportedly stems from a belief that Huawei already offers AI systems with comparable performance to Nvidia's, sources told Bloomberg this week.
- "Huawei can compete far more closely with Nvidia than the US has acknowledged," the sources reportedly told Bloomberg.
- White House officials evaluated a Huawei system built around its newer Ascend chips and concluded its clustered platform performed on par with Nvidia's NVL72 — a system built using Nvidia's top-of-the-line Blackwell GPUs, Bloomberg reported.
Meanwhile, a thriving black market for Nvidia chips in China has been reported for months.
- This week The Information reported that China has already obtained Blackwell-generation chips, citing undisclosed sources.
What we're watching: Will demand for Nvidia's H200s materialize?
- China is pushing aggressively to build a self-sufficient chip supply chain.
- Regulators are reportedly limiting access to H200s, requiring buyers to justify why domestic chips aren't adequate, the FT reported.
Our thought bubble, via Axios' chief technology correspondent Ina Fried: There is demand in China, but the issue right now is access.
- Chinese companies would buy H200s if both governments allowed it.
The bottom line: Nvidia remains the global performance leader, but China's domestic competitors — especially Huawei — are making rapid gains.
