According to two people familiar with the situation, Huawei Technologies (HWT.UL) intends to start shipping large quantities of its cutting-edge 910C artificial intelligence technology to Chinese clients as early as next month.

They further mentioned that some shipments had already been made. The timing is favorable for Chinese AI companies, who are now frantically searching for domestic substitutes for the H20, the main AI processor that Nvidia was able to freely sell in China until recently.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump informed Nvidia this month that an export license would be needed for the H20’s sales.

According to a third person with knowledge of the design and one of the two individuals, Huawei’s 910C graphics processing unit (GPU) is an architectural development rather than a technology one. They claimed that by integrating two 910B processors into a single device using sophisticated integration techniques, it provides performance on par with Nvidia’s H100 chip.

They noted that it offers incremental enhancements, such as improved support for a variety of AI workload data, and that it has twice the computing power and memory capacity of the 910B.

Washington has denied China access to Nvidia’s most cutting-edge AI technologies, including its flagship B200 chip, in an effort to restrict China’s technical advancements, especially those for its military.

For instance, U.S. authorities prohibited the sale of the H100 microprocessor in China in 2022 before it was ever introduced. As a result, Huawei and Chinese GPU firms like Moore Threads and Iluvatar CoreX have been able to target a market that has historically been dominated by Nvidia.

The most recent export restrictions on Nvidia’s H20 by the US Commerce Department “will mean that Huawei’s Ascend 910C GPU will now become the hardware of choice for (Chinese) AI model developers and for deploying inference capacity,” according to Paul Triolo, a partner at the consultancy firm Albright Stonebridge Group.