Huawei is desperate to become a major global player in the AI Chip market but as of now, it’s cautiously taking baby steps and targeting markets in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, according to a report by Bloomberg. That’s going to be an uphill challenge for the China-based multinational, considering who it’s going up against.
Huawei has reportedly reached out to two gulf nations, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, and the Southeast Asian nation of Thailand, over the possibility of them purchasing its Ascend 910B processors. Again, it’s a tall order for the company, given that both gulf nations have already struck deals with tech giants NVIDIA and AMD for over a million of their chips, while the green team’s GPUs predominantly power Thailand’s AI infrastructure.
Clearly, Huawei knows it’s going to be hard to play the volume game and to that end, it’s trying a softer approach: It’s willing to sell its 910B in volumes of the low thousands, although just how low is unclear. In addition, it’s also trying to entice potential customers with remote access to its CloudMatrix 384.
The CloudMatrix 384 is the brand’s rack-scale AI system, comprising 384 units of its more advanced Ascend 910C processors, all arranged in a fully optical, all-to-all mesh network. As to why it is only providing remote access, Huawei only has a limited supply of the AI system. On a related note, Huawei had also pursued a deal for 3,000 units of its Ascend chips in Malaysia by 2026, although the status of that deal is currently unknown.
Another possible reason as to why Huawei is offering potential customers smaller quantity orders may have to do with the ongoing US-China trade restriction. According to a senior Trump official, the company will only be able to make 200,000 AI chips this year, all of which will be used exclusively in China. That number, by the way, doesn’t include its sizable stockpile of 2.9 million Ascend 910B dies that it managed to covertly procure from Taiwanese foundry TSMC.
(Source: Bloomberg)
