From January to June 2026, NVIDIA shipped about 678,000 AI accelerators to China, 44 percent fewer than the same period last year. AI accelerators are specialized chips used to train and run AI models.
The U.S. government has restricted China’s access to NVIDIA’s most powerful AI chips. As a result, the range of products this American company can supply to the world’s second-largest economy has narrowed. At the same time, the Chinese government has supported the development of domestic alternatives and asked Chinese companies to obtain approvals to import NVIDIA’s authorized chips.
The research institute IDC did not specify which NVIDIA products make up the company’s 34 percent share of the market. It is also unclear whether this figure includes advanced chips such as the B200 and B300 - chips whose exports to China have been banned, but which have been reported to be smuggled into the country.
After NVIDIA, Alibaba’s chips hold a seven percent share and products from Cambricon have five percent. Baidu and Kunlunxin each hold four percent and Hygon holds three percent of this market.
Among the 11 Chinese chipmakers whose activity IDC examined, 9 companies experienced increased shipments compared with last year.
Overall, AI accelerator shipments in the first half of 2026 reached about 2.008 million units. / Mehr