NVIDIA acknowledges that Huawei has developed AI solutions far more capable than what the firm is offering to China, forcing them out of the market.

NVIDIA CEO Has Validated That Huawei Is On Par When It Comes To AI Performance, Claiming They Are Progressing Quickly

NVIDIA managed to get off the initial years of the AI hype without any competition, given that the firm was one of the “pioneers” of AI computation. However, fast-forward two years, Team Green is now faced with a rival, particularly in China, who is developing hardware capable of competing with the firm in mainstream markets, despite facing harsh US regulations. In an interview with Bloomberg, NVIDIA’s CEO, Jensen Huang, revealed that Huawei is developing AI chips and clusters on par with the company’s high-end offerings.

Huawei’s technology, based on our best understanding at the moment, is probably comparable to an H200.

They’ve been moving quite fast. They’ve also offered this new system called Cloud Matrix, which scales up to even a larger system than our latest generation, Grace Blackwell. Huawei, as you know, is a formidable technology company. And they’re not sitting still.

They look for ways to compete, and they’re quite formidable.

– NVIDIA’s CEO

Before this, Jensen didn’t mention Huawei’s performance, apart from the fact that they are a “formidable rival”, which shows how big of an influence the Chinese firm has had in such a short time. NVIDIA’s CEO mentioned Huawei’s AI cluster, the CloudMatrix, for the first time on public media, and also disclosed that its performance is equivalent to Grace Blackwell systems, which is the first “official” disclosure about the cluster’s performance, apart from all third-party verification. This means that Huawei has managed to bridge the gap with the West.

Apart from this, NVIDIA’s CEO also revealed that Huawei’s latest AI chip, likely the Ascend 910C, competes with the H200 AI accelerator, which is the highest-end offering in the Hopper lineup. Previously, we were told that China hasn’t managed to catch up with the H100, but it seems like the performance advancements have been way too quick, and Huawei is on a product cadence similar to Team Green, which is why Jensen is so concerned about the company’s business in China.