Nvidia's China AI Chip Market Share Collapses From 95% to Zero

A Stunning Reversal

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, has confirmed that the company's direct AI GPU market share in China has collapsed from roughly 95% to zero. Speaking at the Citadel Securities Future of Global Markets event in October 2025, Huang told the audience the company had gone from 95% market share to 0%, adding that he could not imagine any policymaker thinking that was a good idea. He has reiterated the point in subsequent appearances, describing U.S. export policy as having already largely backfired.

A Market Lost in Stages

The erosion began in October 2022, when Washington first restricted high-end chip exports to China. Nvidia's China-specific A800 and H800 processors were rendered noncompliant by 2023 prohibitions, and the H20, a chip designed expressly to fall within earlier limits, was banned in April 2025, resulting in a $5.5 billion inventory charge. Huang has described the Chinese AI market as a $50 billion annual opportunity that Nvidia can no longer address. Efforts to re-enter the market have stalled repeatedly. The Trump administration approved limited H200 sales to China in late 2025, and Huang announced in March 2026 that the company had received purchase orders and was restarting manufacturing. But Beijing moved to block the chips at customs in January 2026 and directed domestic tech firms not to purchase them unless absolutely necessary. By March, Nvidia had scaled back H200 production in favour of its next-generation Vera Rubin chips.

Huawei Fills the Vacuum

The chief beneficiary of Nvidia's absence is Huawei, which is on track to capture the largest share of China's AI chip market this year. The company expects AI chip revenue to reach approximately $12 billion in 2026, up from $7.5 billion in 2025, a jump of at least 60%, driven by orders for its Ascend 950PR processor. Beijing has actively steered domestic companies towards local suppliers, accelerating demand further after DeepSeek's V4 AI model launched with day-one support for Huawei hardware.

The Broader Shift

Chinese chipmakers claimed 41% of the local AI server market in 2025, shipping 1.65 million GPUs, while Nvidia's share fell to 55%. Morgan Stanley estimates that by 2030, domestic suppliers could account for 86% of a $67 billion Chinese AI chip market. For Nvidia, the world's second-largest computing market has become, as Huang put it, a zero column in its forecasts.