ByteDance and Alibaba plan to place orders for Huawei’s Ascend 950PR AI chip, with Huawei targeting production of 750,000 units in 2026, according to Reuters. Samples were sent to customers in January, with mass production beginning in Q2. The chip is priced at approximately 50,000 yuan ($6,900) per card with DDR memory, or 70,000 yuan for the premium HBM version.
What Makes the 950PR Different
The 950PR offers only a small improvement in raw computing power over Huawei’s previous 910C chip. The key differentiator is CUDA compatibility — developers at Chinese tech firms can now migrate models more easily from NVIDIA’s software ecosystem. Previously, Huawei required its proprietary CANN software system, which created a significant barrier for companies with codebases built on NVIDIA’s CUDA platform.
The chip is designed to excel at inference workloads — running trained AI models to answer queries and execute tasks — rather than the training runs where NVIDIA’s H100 and B200 maintain clear performance advantages. For Chinese AI companies that have already trained their models (potentially on acquired NVIDIA hardware), the 950PR offers a domestically produced option for the inference compute that drives daily operations.
What This Means for Export Controls
U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors were designed to prevent China from developing competitive AI capabilities. The 950PR suggests the controls are accelerating domestic Chinese chip development rather than preventing it. China’s two largest AI companies choosing to buy Huawei chips — when they previously relied on NVIDIA — indicates the domestic alternative has reached a minimum viable threshold.
Biren Technology’s revenue tripled in the same period, confirming broad-based growth in China’s domestic AI chip market. DeepSeek V4 is also optimized for Chinese chips (Huawei Ascend + Cambricon). The export controls created a large captive domestic market with guaranteed government-backed demand — exactly the conditions under which domestic industries historically develop fastest.
