NVIDIA Falls Below 60% Share in China: Here’s Who is Taking Its Place

The first quarter of 2026 may have marked a turning point for the GPU sector in China, with the two main domestic designers - Cambricon Technologies and MetaX Integrated Circuits - publishing financial results well above analysts' expectations.

Data confirm a growth trajectory, fueled by the demand for computational power for artificial intelligence and the strategic urgency to reduce reliance on U.S. suppliers.

Cambricon reported revenues of 2.89 billion yuan (approximately 423 million dollars) for the January-March 2026 quarter, up 160% from the same period the previous year. Net profit reached 1 billion yuan, an increase of 185% year-on-year. The Beijing-based company, listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, attributed the performance to the "sustained growth in demand for computational power in the AI sector."

For the entire year of 2025, Cambricon had already reported revenues of 6.5 billion yuan and a net profit of 2.06 billion yuan, marking the first profitable year since the company's founding in 2016. Previously, Cambricon was a loss-making entity that had lost Huawei as a major client by early 2024.

The customer structure remains highly concentrated: the five largest customers represented 94% of revenues in the first half of 2025, with the largest customer alone accounting for around 80%. Chinese media identify ByteDance as the dominant buyer, with the parent company of TikTok reportedly having pre-ordered about 200,000 Siyuan 590 chips. Alibaba is indicated as a potential new relevant client in the expansion of domestic AI infrastructure.

In terms of production, Cambricon aims to achieve 500,000 shipments of AI accelerators in 2026, up from about 116,000 units in 2025. Achieving this goal significantly depends on SMIC’s ability to produce chips at the 7-nanometer node, for which production yields are around 20%.

The company is one of only two firms, alongside Huawei, listed on the approved AI hardware list for public procurement in China. NVIDIA, despite a partial easing of U.S. restrictions, remains excluded from this list.

MetaX Integrated Circuits, founded in 2020 by former engineers of U.S. producer Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange since last December, reported revenues of 561.9 million yuan in the first quarter of 2026, up 75% year-on-year. The growth was attributed to increasing GPU shipments. However, the company recorded a net loss of 98.8 million yuan for the quarter, confirming that the path to profitability is still underway. MetaX remains significantly distant in scale from Cambricon and has yet to achieve operational breakeven.

According to IDC data cited by Reuters in early April, Chinese chip manufacturers delivered 1.65 million AI GPUs in 2025, capturing 41% of the domestic AI server market. Huawei confirmed its status as the leading domestic supplier, with around 812,000 units shipped.

On the international competitor front, NVIDIA's share of the Chinese market has dropped from about 95% before sanctions to less than the current 60%. Bernstein analysts estimate that this share could further reduce to as low as 8% in the coming years as local manufacturers ramp up production.

However, it should be noted that domestic Chinese chips remain several generations behind the Blackwell architecture currently marketed by NVIDIA. Nevertheless, local entities are backed by the Beijing government: despite the formal opening of the Trump administration to the sale of NVIDIA H200 chips to China, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick stated that no H200 units have actually been sold to the country, in the absence of approval from Beijing.