AI Chips · Brand guide

Huawei Ascend: The Complete Guide

Huawei is China's leading maker of AI chips, building them under US export restrictions that cut it off from the world's most advanced factories. What Ascend is, how it works, the roadmap to 2029, what is known about who makes it, and what Huawei does and does not disclose. Three reading levels, every number sourced.

Stuck at any point? Ask an AI about this page →
Huawei Ascend 16 sections · 3 levels 38 linked sources Checked September 2026
How to read this page. Every brand in our AI Chips section uses the same 16 sections in the same order. Each section starts Simple, then goes Deeper, then Expert: stop wherever you have what you need. The small numbers are sources: click one to open the original document. Where a company has not published something, we say so rather than estimate.

1.At a glance

SimpleStart here

Ascend is Huawei's family of AI chips, designed by its chip unit HiSilicon 1 2. Huawei has been on a US export blacklist since 2019, so it cannot buy chips made with American technology or use the world's most advanced factories without a US licence 1 3. It has answered by building very large systems out of many less powerful chips 4.

What it isChina's leading home-grown AI chip family 2 5
Current chipsAscend 910C; the 950 series from 2026; 960 in 2027 4 6
Who builds itHuawei does not say; press and analysts point to China's SMIC and stockpiled TSMC parts 7 8
Can you buy one?Inside Huawei servers and Huawei Cloud, mainly in China 9 10
DeeperThe detail

Huawei's rotating chairman Eric Xu said in 2025 that "the Chinese mainland will lag behind in semiconductor manufacturing process nodes for a relatively long time", which is why Huawei focuses on joining chips together 4. Its Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD joins 384 Ascend chips into one system; Huawei says more than 1,000 had been deployed by September 2026 11 6.

ExpertFor specialists

Huawei does not report Ascend revenue separately 12. Its 2025 revenue was CNY 880.9 billion, up 2.2%, with net profit of CNY 68.0 billion and research spending of CNY 192.3 billion, 21.8% of revenue 12 13. The research firm IDC estimated that Huawei shipped about 812,000 AI accelerator cards in China in 2025, about a fifth of the market (analyst estimate, reported by press) 5.

2.Company card

SimpleStart here

Huawei was founded in 1987 in Shenzhen by Ren Zhengfei 14. It is not listed on any stock exchange: it says it is "wholly owned by 169,054 of its employees and retired beneficiaries", and Ren holds about 0.59% 14.

Legal nameHuawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd. (Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. is the main operating company) 14 1
HeadquartersBantian Huawei Base, Longgang District, Shenzhen 518129, China 1 (map)
ChairmanLiang Hua 14
Rotating chairDavid Wang (Wang Tao), 1 April to 30 September 2026 15
Chip unitHiSilicon, also on the US Entity List 1
EmployeesAbout 213,000 14
StockNot listed 14
DeeperThe detail

Huawei's rotating chairs take turns leading the board for six months each 15; founder Ren Zhengfei is often described in the press as chief executive 16. In April 2026 David Wang became a vice chairman in a board reshuffle, press reports say 17. About 114,000 staff, 53.7% of the workforce, work in research and development 12.

ExpertFor specialists

2025 revenue by business: ICT infrastructure CNY 375.0 billion, consumer devices CNY 344.5 billion, digital power CNY 77.3 billion, cars CNY 45.0 billion, cloud CNY 32.2 billion 12. China supplied CNY 616.2 billion, about 70% 12. Press reports put first-half 2026 revenue at CNY 467.8 billion, up about 9.6%, with net profit down about 37% as research spending rose to 25.9% of revenue 18.

3.The story

SimpleStart here
  • 2018 Huawei announces the Ascend chip range 9.
  • 2019 Ascend 910 launches (August); Huawei added to the US Entity List (May) 2 1.
  • 2020 US rule cuts Huawei off from chips made with US technology 3.
  • 2025 CloudMatrix 384 launches; four-year chip roadmap published 19 4.
  • 2026 Ascend 950 cards ship; roadmap extended to 2029 20 6.
DeeperThe detail

The first Ascend 910, made in 2019, delivered 256 teraflops at 16-bit precision within 310 watts, Huawei said 2. Analysts' die photos show the later 910B is a different, larger chip with fewer AI cores, consistent with a move to a less advanced Chinese process after 2020 (press analysis) 7.

ExpertFor specialists

In May 2025 the US Commerce Department warned that using the "Huawei Ascend 910B, Huawei Ascend 910C" and a 910D without US authorisation "could result in BIS enforcement actions" 21 22. At Huawei Connect 2026 Huawei moved the Ascend 960DT forward to early 2027, "three quarters ahead", and added a 980 for 2029 6.

4.The lineup

SimpleStart here
ChipRoleTiming (Huawei)
Ascend 310Small inference chip, 8 W2018 2 9
Ascend 910Training chip2019 2
Ascend 910B / 910CCurrent workhorses; 910C is two dies in one packageNo official datasheet 23
Ascend 950PRPrefill and recommendationQ1 2026 4
Ascend 950DTDecode and trainingQ4 2026 4
Ascend 960DT / 960PRNext generationQ1 / Q3 2027 6
Ascend 970 / 980Following generations2028 / 2029 6
DeeperThe detail

Huawei's systems matter more than its chips. Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD: up to 384 chips 11. Atlas 950 SuperPoD: up to 8,192 Ascend 950DT chips in 160 cabinets, planned for Q4 2026 in 2025 and described as in large-scale commercial use by September 2026 4 6. Atlas 960E SuperPoD, unveiled in 2026: 4,096 chips with near-packaged optics 6.

ExpertFor specialists

The 2025 roadmap promised an Atlas 960 SuperPoD of 15,488 chips; the 2026 announcement was 4,096, a reduction noted by analysts 4 6 24. Huawei also plans "SuperClusters" of more than 500,000 chips, and says its network design can scale to 1 million 4 6.

5.How it’s made

SimpleStart here

Huawei designs Ascend but does not publish who manufactures it 8.

  1. Design: HiSilicon 1.
  2. Chip factory: not disclosed; press and analysts say China's SMIC, on a 7 nm-class process 7 25.
  3. Older stock: a 2024 teardown found a TSMC-made die in a 910B; TSMC said it "has not supplied to Huawei since mid-September 2020" (press) 26.
  4. Memory: Huawei now makes its own stacked memory, HiBL 1.0 and HiZQ 2.0, for the 950 series 4.
DeeperThe detail

Analysts at SemiAnalysis estimate Huawei received more than 2.9 million Ascend dies from TSMC before controls tightened, and that stacked memory (HBM), not the chips themselves, limits how many Ascend packages China can build (analyst estimates) 8. Press reports from Huawei Connect 2026 say Huawei cannot make as many chips as buyers want 24.

ExpertFor specialists

Die-shot analysis puts the 910B at 665.6 mm² with about 25 AI cores, against 456.3 mm² and 32 cores for the TSMC-made 910, implying a less dense process (press analysis) 7. SemiAnalysis estimates about 805,000 Ascend units in 2025, 653,000 of them 910C (analyst estimate) 8.

6.Where it’s made: factories and addresses

SimpleStart here

Huawei does not publish where Ascend chips are made or packaged, so there is no factory address to give 8. What it does publish:

SiteLocationWhat we know
Huawei Cloud AI data centresGuizhou, Inner Mongolia and Anhui provinces, ChinaLiquid-cooled, 80 kW per cabinet 10
CloudMatrix 384 first large deploymentWuhu, AnhuiReported by press in April 2025 19
HeadquartersBantian, ShenzhenCompany base 1
DeeperThe detail

Huawei Cloud says customers of its AI compute service grew from 321 in 2024 to 1,805 by September 2025 10. Press reports from Huawei Connect 2026 say an "AI Cluster Service" will launch outside China on 30 November 2026 24.

ExpertFor specialists

Huawei said in 2018 that it would not sell the chips on their own, only in its own products 9. Atlas systems made their global debut at MWC in Barcelona in March 2026 27.

7.How it works

SimpleStart here

Every Ascend chip is built from "Da Vinci" cores. Each core has a cube unit that multiplies whole grids of numbers in one step, a vector unit for other maths, and a small control unit 28. Huawei's software for programming the chips is called CANN, and its AI framework is MindSpore 2 29.

DeeperThe detail

Each cube unit multiplies 16 × 16 blocks, which Huawei's presentation says equals 4,096 16-bit multiply-adds per cycle 30. The Ascend 910C joins two dies in one package for about 752 teraflops at 16-bit precision, according to a Huawei-co-authored paper 23. Chips are linked by Huawei's UnifiedBus network 4.

ExpertFor specialists

Huawei said in August 2025 that it would open-source CANN 29, with its tools and models to be fully open by the end of 2025 31. By September 2026 it reported more than 5,200 monthly active CANN developers, 61% from outside Huawei 6. It supports PyTorch, vLLM and SGLang 27.

8.Specs explained

SimpleStart here

Huawei's own figures where published:

ChipAI computeMemoryLink speed
Ascend 31016 TOPS INT8; 8 TFLOPS FP16—— 2
Ascend 910 (2019)256 TFLOPS FP16; 512 TOPS INT8HBM2— 2 30
Ascend 910CAbout 752 TFLOPS BF16 (two dies)—— 23
Ascend 950 series1 PFLOPS FP8; 2 PFLOPS MXFP4950DT: 144 GB, 4 TB/s2 TB/s 4
Ascend 9602 PFLOPS FP8; 4 PFLOPS FP4Double the 950Double 4
DeeperThe detail
SystemChipsComputeStatus
Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD384About 300 PFLOPS at 16-bitOver 1,000 deployed 11 6
Atlas 950 SuperPoD8,1928 EFLOPS FP8"Large-scale commercial use" (Sep 2026) 4 6
Atlas 960E SuperPoD4,0968 EFLOPS FP8Unveiled Sep 2026; ship date not given 6
ExpertFor specialists

The Atlas 350 card with the 950PR, as reported in March 2026, lists 1.56 PFLOPS FP4 and 112 GB of memory at 1.4 TB/s, below the September 2025 roadmap figures; the reason has not been explained (press) 20 4. Press reports give the 960DT 288 GB of memory, consistent with Huawei's 2025 statement that the 960 doubles the 950's capacity 24 4.

9.Official pricing

SimpleStart here

Huawei publishes no prices for Ascend chips, cards or Atlas servers.

ProductPrice
Ascend chips and Atlas cardsNot published by the company 8
Atlas SuperPoD systemsNot published by the company 4
Huawei Cloud Ascend instancesNot published on the pages we could read; prices sit behind an online calculator 32
DeeperThe detail

Huawei Cloud claims its Ascend service offers "30% more cost-effective AI computing power than competitors" (Huawei's own claim) 32. Press reports from September 2026 say Huawei raised the price of the Ascend 950DT by 60%, citing tight component supply 24.

ExpertFor specialists

Because US rules restrict sales of NVIDIA's top chips in China, Huawei's prices are set in a market with limited foreign competition 22. See our export rules guide for how those rules work.

10.The software lock-in

SimpleStart here

Huawei's main strength is its position at home. Chinese buyers face limits on US chips, and press reports say state-funded data centres have been told to use domestic chips 33. Huawei is the largest domestic supplier, according to IDC figures reported by press 5.

DeeperThe detail

Huawei makes most of the system itself: chips, servers, network, optics, cloud and software 4 6. Its 2026 optical system uses 5,500 of its own optical units in place of 48,000 standard modules, saving more than 550 kW, Huawei says 6.

ExpertFor specialists

Huawei claims its Atlas 950 SuperPoD has 6.7 times the compute of NVIDIA's NVL144 rack; that compares 8,192 chips with 144, so it shows scale, not chip-for-chip speed (Huawei claim) 4. Huawei reports 4 million Ascend developers 12.

11.Who buys it and why

SimpleStart here

Huawei does not publish a customer list for Ascend. Publicly reported users include iFlytek, which said in 2025 that it trained a reasoning model entirely on Huawei chips, and DeepSeek, which said in 2026 that its V4 model can run on Huawei chips; Huawei said its chips were used in some of V4's training (press reports) 34 35.

DeeperThe detail

Huawei says "the full range of its Ascend SuperPoD products" supports DeepSeek's V4 models, press reports say 35. SiliconFlow co-wrote Huawei's paper on serving DeepSeek-R1 on CloudMatrix 384 23.

ExpertFor specialists

Huawei's paper reports 6,688 tokens a second per chip for prefill and 1,943 for decode on DeepSeek-R1, and says its compute efficiency (tokens per second per unit of compute) exceeds published results on NVIDIA H100 and H800 systems (Huawei's own test) 23.

12.Hidden in plain sight

SimpleStart here

Public facts in plain sight. Each links to the exact document.

  1. Huawei's founder owns about 0.59%; 169,054 employees and retirees own the rest 14.
  2. Research spending was nearly three times profit in 2025: CNY 192.3 billion against CNY 68.0 billion 12.
  3. Huawei's own executive says China will lag in chip manufacturing "for a relatively long time" 4.
  4. The US names Ascend chips individually in its May 2025 guidance, including a "910D" 21.
  5. Huawei does not report Ascend revenue 12.
DeeperThe detail
  1. The 2027 system announced in 2026 has 4,096 chips, against 15,488 in the 2025 plan; analysts noted the gap, and Huawei has not said the larger design is cancelled 4 6 24.
  2. A TSMC-made die turned up in a 910B years after the 2020 cut-off (press) 26.
  3. About 70% of Huawei's revenue comes from China 12.
  4. The Americas are about 4% of revenue 12.
  5. Huawei now designs its own stacked memory 4.
ExpertFor specialists
  1. AI compute cloud customers rose more than fivefold, from 321 in 2024 to 1,805 by September 2025 10.
  2. The shipped 950PR card has less memory than the roadmap said (press) 20.
  3. Two developer counts: 4 million registered Ascend developers, and about 5,200 monthly active developers of the CANN code itself 12 6.
  4. Huawei's board is led by chairs who rotate every six months 15.
  5. Huawei said in 2018 that individual Ascend chips would not be sold to third parties 9.

13.Weak spots

SimpleStart here

Limits, from Huawei's statements and outside analysis:

  • Older manufacturing: a 7 nm-class process against 4 nm for NVIDIA (press) 25.
  • Not enough supply: press reports say Huawei cannot make as many chips as buyers want 24.
  • Memory limits: stacked memory is the bottleneck (analyst) 8.
  • US restrictions on technology and on foreign use of Ascend 1 21.
DeeperThe detail

SemiAnalysis estimates CloudMatrix 384 uses about 4.1 times the power of NVIDIA's GB200 NVL72 rack and is about 2.5 times less efficient per unit of compute (analyst estimate) 36. Press reports say the 960DT has roughly half the FP8 compute of NVIDIA's B300 24.

ExpertFor specialists

Software is still being built out: Huawei reports about 5,200 monthly active developers working on the CANN code itself, a much smaller group than its 4 million registered Ascend developers 6 12. Huawei is spending to close it, committing 1,500 PFLOPS of computing a year and 30,000 development boards to developers 31.

14.India angle

SimpleStart here

We found no Ascend sales or deployments in India. Huawei opened a research centre in Bengaluru in 2000; press reports in 2022 said it was being scaled down 37.

DeeperThe detail

Huawei and ZTE were not among the companies approved for India's 5G trials in May 2021, press reports say 38. India requires telecom equipment to come from "trusted sources", which Huawei had not obtained, according to press reports 37.

ExpertFor specialists

For India's own chip plans see our India's semiconductor push guide.

15.What’s next

SimpleStart here

Only what Huawei has announced:

  • Ascend 950DT: Q4 2026 4.
  • Ascend 960DT: Q1 2027; 960PR Q3 2027 6.
  • Ascend 970 and 980: 2028 and 2029 6.
  • AI Cluster Service outside China: from 30 November 2026 (press) 24.
DeeperThe detail

Huawei describes a "one-generation-a-year cycle", with compute continuing to double 6. Whether supply keeps up depends on Chinese chip factories and memory makers (analyst) 8.

ExpertFor specialists

US policy is the other variable: the rules on selling NVIDIA chips into China have changed several times since 2022 22; our export rules guide tracks them.

16.Sources

38 sources, all checked September 2026. Official = the company or organisation’s own page; Filing = a document filed with a regulator; Press = news coverage, used only where no official source exists and labelled in the text.

  1. US Federal Register: Addition of Huawei and affiliates to the Entity List (21 May 2019)Government
  2. Huawei launch release (via Edge AI and Vision Alliance): Huawei launches Ascend 910 and MindSpore (23 Aug 2019)Official
  3. US Department of Commerce: Commerce further restricts Huawei access to US technology (17 Aug 2020)Government
  4. Huawei Newsroom: Eric Xu keynote at Huawei Connect 2025: Ascend roadmap (18 Sep 2025)Official
  5. WinBuzzer (press, citing IDC via Reuters): Chinese chipmakers hold 41% of China's AI chip market (3 Apr 2026)Press
  6. Huawei Newsroom: David Wang keynote at Huawei Connect 2026 (Sep 2026)Official
  7. Tom's Hardware (press): SMIC-produced Ascend 910B is massively different from the TSMC-produced Ascend 910Press
  8. SemiAnalysis (analyst): Huawei Ascend production ramp (Sep 2025)Research
  9. DatacenterDynamics (press): Connect 2018: Huawei introduces AI chip range called AscendPress
  10. Huawei Cloud Newsroom: Huawei Cloud AI infrastructure and Ascend cloud update (Sep 2025)Official
  11. Huawei Enterprise (Chinese): Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD product pageOfficial
  12. Huawei: Annual Report 2025: key figuresOfficial
  13. Huawei Newsroom: Huawei releases its 2025 Annual Report (31 Mar 2026)Official
  14. Huawei: Company facts: ownership, staff, leadershipOfficial
  15. Huawei Newsroom: Rotating chair tenure: David Wang, 1 Apr to 30 Sep 2026Official
  16. CNBC (press): Transcript: Ren Zhengfei, Huawei founder and CEO (15 Apr 2019)Press
  17. Caixin Global (press): Huawei names Wang Tao vice chairman in leadership reshuffle (4 Apr 2026)Press
  18. TechNode (press): Huawei first-half 2026 revenue and R&D spending (1 Sep 2026)Press
  19. Yicai (press): Huawei Cloud launches CloudMatrix 384 at scale (Apr 2025)Press
  20. TechRadar (press): Huawei Atlas 350 card with Ascend 950PR (Mar 2026)Press
  21. US Bureau of Industry and Security: Guidance on General Prohibition 10 and PRC advanced computing chips (13 May 2025, PDF)Government
  22. US Bureau of Industry and Security: Commerce rescinds AI Diffusion Rule, strengthens chip-related guidance (13 May 2025)Government
  23. Huawei and SiliconFlow authors (arXiv): Serving large language models on Huawei CloudMatrix384 (2025)Paper
  24. The Next Web (press): Huawei Connect 2026: Ascend 960, SuperPoD and UnifiedBusPress
  25. RCR Wireless (press, citing Bloomberg): Huawei AI chip output plans (30 Sep 2025)Press
  26. South China Morning Post (press): TSMC chips found in Huawei's AI processors (Oct 2024)Press
  27. Huawei Newsroom: SuperPoD global debut at MWC 2026 (2 Mar 2026)Official
  28. Huawei Ascend documentation: Ascend C: AI Core architecture (cube, vector, scalar units)Official
  29. Xinhua (press): Huawei announces full open-sourcing of CANN (7 Aug 2025)Press
  30. Huawei (conference presentation): DaVinci: a scalable architecture for neural network computing (PDF)Conference
  31. Huawei Newsroom: Ascend open-source plans at Huawei Connect 2025Official
  32. Huawei Cloud: Ascend AI Cloud Service product pageOfficial
  33. Tom's Hardware (press, citing Reuters): China bans foreign AI chips from state-funded data centres (Nov 2025)Press
  34. South China Morning Post (press): iFlytek touts reasoning model trained entirely on Huawei's AI chips (Apr 2025)Press
  35. Asia Financial (press): DeepSeek says new V4 model can run on Huawei chips (24 Apr 2026)Press
  36. SemiAnalysis (analyst): Huawei AI CloudMatrix 384: China's answer to NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 (Apr 2025)Research
  37. Light Reading (press): Huawei to scale down R&D presence in India (2022)Press
  38. Gizmochina (press): Huawei and ZTE excluded from 5G trials in India (5 May 2021)Press

On this page

1. At a glance2. Company card3. The story4. The lineup5. How it’s made6. Where it’s made: factories and addresses7. How it works8. Specs explained9. Official pricing10. The software lock-in11. Who buys it and why12. Hidden in plain sight13. Weak spots14. India angle15. What’s next16. Sources

Quick facts

HeadquartersShenzhen, China
Founded1987
ChairmanLiang Hua
Makes its own chips?Designs them; maker not disclosed
OwnershipEmployee-owned; not listed
2025 revenueCNY 880.9 billion

AI Chips

All chip brandsAmazon TrainiumAMDAppleCerebrasGoogle TPUGroqIntelMeta MTIAMicrosoft MaiaNVIDIAAI memory (HBM) and why it is scarceExport rules and the US–China chip contestHow a chip is made: sand to serverHow AI chips workIndia’s semiconductor pushHow to read a chip spec sheetToday’s AI news

In the news

Newest stories mentioning Huawei Ascend, straight from the companies’ own newsrooms and the wider press. Links open the original.

All of today’s AI news →

Ask an AI about this page

Opens your assistant with this page as the source, and a question rather than a summary. It will ask what you are building before it answers.

ChatGPTClaudeGeminiPerplexityGrok

Nothing is sent from here. The link carries only this page’s title and address.