Chinese Tech Companies Race to Secure Huawei AI Chips

Chinese tech companies, including ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba, are racing to secure AI chips from Huawei after a spike in demand driven by the release of DeepSeek’s latest V4 AI model. Cloud computing companies and GPU rental services also approached Huawei to place new orders for its Ascend 950 chip series.

The spike follows the release of DeepSeek V4 last week, a model optimized specifically for Huawei’s chips that opens a window for the Chinese vendor to push its in-house semiconductors. Following the launch of DeepSeek V4, domestic cloud giants Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud immediately integrated the AI player’s latest model, providing developers with immediate access to both the V4-Pro and V4-Flash options. The model is expected to significantly raise demand for AI workloads and domestic processing capacity, which in turn marks a turning point for Huawei.

The vendor has struggled in recent years to secure large orders from China’s technology sector. Yet, supply remains tight as production of domestic chips continues to be constrained by US export curbs on advanced manufacturing tools. Huawei is reportedly expected to ship around 750,000 units of the 950PR this year, with full-scale shipments ramping through the second half of 2026.