Huawei
In plain wordsA Chinese technology giant, known for telecom equipment and phones, that designs China's leading homegrown AI chips despite US trade restrictions.
A Chinese technology company, the world's largest maker of telecommunications network equipment, that has become China's leading designer of AI accelerators. Its Ascend chips, designed by its HiSilicon unit, together with the MindSpore framework and the CANN software stack, form the main domestic alternative in China to NvidiaNvidia, prop. n.: An American chip company whose graphics processors became the main hardware for training and running AI, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. hardware and CUDACUDA, prop. n.: Nvidia's software system for programming its graphics chips to do general calculations. Most AI software is built on it, which is a big reason Nvidia chips dominate AI.; in 2025 it introduced the CloudMatrix 384, a rack-scale system linking 384 Ascend processors that offsets weaker individual chips with scale. Placed on the US Entity List in 2019, Huawei lost access to TSMCTSMC, prop. n.: The Taiwanese company that manufactures most of the world's advanced computer chips, including nearly all of the specialized chips used to train and run AI.'s manufacturing in 2020 and has since relied on Chinese foundries such as SMIC, making it the focal point of export controls on AI chipsexport controls on AI chips, n.: Government rules that limit which countries and companies may buy the most advanced AI chips and the machines used to make them. The United States uses them mainly to slow China's progress in AI. and of debates over China's technological self-sufficiency. It also develops the Pangu family of AI models.
Origin
Founded in 1987 in Shenzhen by Ren Zhengfei, a former engineer in the People's Liberation Army, initially to resell telephone switches; it grew into a global supplier of networks and smartphones and announced its Ascend AI chips in 2018.
Related
- export controls on AI chipsexport controls on AI chips, n.: Government rules that limit which countries and companies may buy the most advanced AI chips and the machines used to make them. The United States uses them mainly to slow China's progress in AI.
- AI acceleratorAI accelerator, n.: Any chip built or tuned to speed up AI — graphics chips, Google's TPUs, phone 'neural engines' and many startup designs. Such chips do the heavy math of training and running models.
- NvidiaNvidia, prop. n.: An American chip company whose graphics processors became the main hardware for training and running AI, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world.
- TSMCTSMC, prop. n.: The Taiwanese company that manufactures most of the world's advanced computer chips, including nearly all of the specialized chips used to train and run AI.
- sovereign AIsovereign AI, n.: A country's ability to build and run AI on its own terms, so that the computers, models and know-how it relies on cannot be withheld or dictated by foreign companies or governments.
- DeepSeekDeepSeek, prop. n.: A Chinese artificial intelligence company whose free, cheaply trained models startled the world in January 2025 by nearly matching the best American systems.