Huawei seeks new ways to sell chips.

Huawei Technologies is seeking to export a small quantity of artificial intelligence chips to the Middle East and Southeast Asia, aiming to establish a foothold in markets currently dominated by Nvidia.

Huawei, the US's strongest competitor in chip manufacturing, has approached potential customers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and Thailand to offer its older generation Ascend 910B chips, according to SCMP sources .

The UAE and Saudi Arabia recently signed agreements to purchase over one million chips from Nvidia and AMD over the next several years. Thailand's AI development efforts to date have also relied heavily on advanced chips from Nvidia.

Huawei's marketing efforts

Huawei is reportedly only offering a few thousand 910B chips in each batch. The exact number in each offering remains unclear.

The 910B is an older generation of Ascend chips developed by Huawei for training and developing AI models. Manufactured using a 7nm process, the 910B is said to have performance nearly equivalent to Nvidia's A100 chip. The 910C, the latest generation of Ascend chips, combines elements from two 910B chips and has performance nearly equivalent to the H100, according to Reuters sources .

The Shenzhen-based company is also seeking to attract customers by allowing remote access to its CloudMatrix 384 system, a high-performance computing system located in China and built on the 910C chip. However, Huawei is not currently ready to export the 910C chip due to limited supply. They prioritize selling the 910C to Chinese businesses that cannot access advanced US AI chips.

Huawei's Ascend is said to have performance nearly equivalent to the most powerful AI chips currently available. Photo: Huawei .

Both US officials and Huawei itself have assessed that the Ascend chip line is still at least a generation behind Nvidia.

Huawei's sales efforts have yet to yield any official contracts. However, this move shows the Chinese company wants to introduce its technology to the international market while simultaneously ramping up production.

Institutions in the UAE, including Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), are reportedly uninterested. An MBZUAI representative stated, "We have never had any contact with Huawei regarding the use of their hardware at the university."

Bloomberg previously reported that Huawei had been in negotiations to supply Malaysia with approximately 3,000 Ascend chips, but the status of this project remains unclear.

Saudi Arabia appears more open to the possibility of buying Huawei chips. A source said an agreement between Huawei and the Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) is progressing. An official spokesperson from the agency said they were not ready to comment at this time.

A former Trump administration official said Huawei could only produce about 200,000 AI chips this year, primarily to meet domestic Chinese demand, which exceeds 1 million chips. However, this figure does not include the nearly 3 million 910B chips that Huawei has stockpiled from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC).

China's exports of AI chips are a concern for the US.

US Deputy Commerce Secretary Jeffrey Kessler stated last month that Washington should be cautious even though China's advanced chip production is relatively small, because China has global ambitions.

Huawei's Ascend 910D is expected to offer higher performance than Nvidia's H100. Photo: Huawei .

US officials are particularly interested in AI infrastructure projects in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, given the region's long-standing relationship with Beijing and with Huawei.

Since 2023, US companies wishing to export AI chips to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states have needed a US license. The US Department of Commerce has also yet to approve billions of dollars worth of chip shipments under agreements that President Trump announced during his visit to the Gulf in May.

Some U.S. officials worry that exporting large quantities of American chips could indirectly benefit Beijing, arguing that Huawei's offering of only small quantities of older Ascend chips is evidence that the U.S. can still remain "calm" in its decision-making.

Washington is also exerting increasing pressure, warning companies around the world against using Huawei's Ascend chips.

Earlier this year, the US Department of Commerce warned that using Huawei's Ascend chips "anywhere in the world" could violate US trade restrictions, as Ascend chips use US technology in their manufacturing process.

Following a reaction from China, the US retracted its statement, but still emphasized that the unauthorized use of the Ascend 910B, 910C, or 910D chip lines that Huawei plans to launch could result in sanctions against the parties involved by Washington.

Source: https://znews.vn/huawei-tim-cach-moi-de-ban-chip-post1568270.html