Nvidia's advanced AI chip sales in China are stalling as domestic competitors led by Huawei capture market share, the Los Angeles Times reports.
CEO Jensen Huang visited Beijing during President Trump's May summit with Xi Jinping — his celebrity status drew crowds on the street. It did not translate into chip orders. Controls imposed by Washington have restricted Nvidia's ability to sell its most advanced processors into China, and the gap is being filled by local manufacturers.
Huawei's Ascend series and other domestic alternatives are now winning contracts that would have gone to Nvidia before export restrictions tightened. The shift is not speculative — it shows up in stalled sales figures and procurement decisions across Chinese cloud providers and enterprises.
The development marks a concrete consequence of the US export control regime. The policy was designed to slow China's AI progress by denying access to cutting-edge silicon. The immediate effect is a reshaped market where the restricted supplier loses share and the domestic alternative gains it.
Analysis
Export controls succeed at blocking Nvidia. They fail at blocking China. The silicon gap that US policy was built to maintain is closing not because China caught up on process technology — it has not — but because the market adapts. Huawei does not need to beat Nvidia on raw performance. It needs to be good enough that Chinese buyers stop waiting for the restricted alternative. That threshold has been crossed. The long-term cost is a China AI ecosystem built on domestic hardware that no US export license can touch.
