Nvidia’s China AI Empire Crumbles as Local Giants Rise—But Can They Keep Up?

Nvidia’s AI empire in China is crumbling—fast. Export bans and homegrown rivals are set to slash its market share from 66% to 8% in just a few years.

Moore Threads CEO Zhang Jianzhong announced the Huashan GPU at a news conference, stating:

"The new products meet the needs of domestic developers."

Bernstein analysts, cited by Nikkei, project Nvidia’s AI processor market share in China will fall to 8% from 66% in 2024 as domestic vendors like Huawei, Cambricon, Moore Threads, and MetaX capture ~80% of local demand. Moore Threads’ Huashan competes with Nvidia’s H100/H200 but lags behind the Blackwell B200/B300 GPUs currently banned for export to China.

Huawei’s AI CloudMatrix 384 outperforms GB200/GB300 systems in BF16 FLOPS but consumes four times more power. China’s AI industry remains constrained by SMIC’s 7nm process capacity, a bottleneck that could limit scaling unless high-performance GPUs are imported.

The Communist Party’s draft five-year plan emphasizes semiconductor self-reliance through state-directed "four little dragons" GPU firms: Moore Threads, MetaX, Biren Technology, and Enflame.