A Keynote Speech by Eric Xu at Huawei Connect 2025 today has revealed Huawei’s most detailed semiconductor roadmap to date, signaling China’s determination to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers and directly challenge Nvidia’s dominance in AI chips.
Speaking at the Huawei Connect conference in Shanghai, rotating chairman Eric Xu announced annual updates to the company’s Ascend AI chips, beginning with the Ascend 950 in 2026 and extending through the Ascend 970 in 2028. Huawei also revealed it has developed proprietary high-bandwidth memory, a field long dominated by South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung.
Xu, a leading Chinese entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist best known as the co-founder of Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine, said Huawei’s main focus will be on so-called “supernodes,” massive computing systems that connect thousands of chips. The upcoming Atlas 950, scheduled for late 2026, will support over 8,000 Ascend processors, while the Atlas 960 in 2027 will double that capacity.
Huawei claims these systems will surpass global competitors across performance benchmarks.
The announcements come as Beijing ramps up efforts to restrict purchases of Nvidia chips after Chinese regulators recently accused Nvidia of violating antitrust laws and ordered major tech companies to cancel chip orders.
Analysts say Huawei’s disclosures are both a show of technical progress and a political signal ahead of President Xi Jinping’s upcoming meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump.
By CEO NA Editorial Staff
