Huawei's new AI chip draws orders from ByteDance, Alibaba: sources

Huawei has begun customer testing of its new 950PR AI chip, with ByteDance and Alibaba planning to place orders, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The people said Huawei aims to ship about 750,000 950PR chips this year after sending samples in January, with mass production expected to start next month and broader shipments in the second half.

The 950PR is designed to work more smoothly with Nvidia’s CUDA software and to handle AI inference, even if gains in raw computing power over Huawei’s Ascend 910C are limited.

The chip is expected to cost about 50,000 yuan (US$7.234) per card, with a higher-end version using HBM memory priced around 70,000 yuan (US$10.128).

The plans come as the US export curbs have restricted several Nvidia AI chips from being sold in China.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

The 950PR is part of Huawei’s Ascend 950 family, with a sister chip planned for training

The Ascend 950PR sits in Huawei’s Ascend 950 lineup, which aims to take on Nvidia across several AI tasks 1.
Huawei’s roadmap lists 950DT as a companion chip for training plus decoding inference, while 950PR focuses on inference 1.
Huawei Connect 2025 (Huawei’s annual conference for partners and developers) included talk of HiBL 1.0, Huawei’s in-house high-bandwidth memory meant to cut dependence on SK Hynix and Samsung 1.
For software, Huawei pushes CANN (Compute Architecture for Neural Networks, Huawei’s AI software stack); many Chinese firms pair it with adapters and compatibility layers for PyTorch and TensorFlow 2.

Huawei’s chip progress is intertwined with US export controls and China’s own restrictions

Coverage of the earlier Ascend 910C tied its progress to the U.S. decision to clear limited exports of Nvidia’s H200 to China 3.
The updated U.S. policy allowed H200 shipments under strict terms, including a 25% fee payable to the U.S. government 4.
Reports say China then held approved H200 deliveries at customs, and urged local tech companies to avoid buying them unless needed 5.
Faster domestic Chinese chip development plus shifting U.S. rules keep both sides cycling through trade-offs between tech containment and self-sufficiency 4.