CIOTech Outlook Team | Friday, 11 July 2025, 06:07 IST
Huawei Technologies is strategically trying to sell small amounts of its AI chips to the Middle East and Southeast Asia to enter markets currently dominated by U.S. chipmaker Nvidia.
Huawei is offering the older generation of Ascend 910B AI chips to prospective customers in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand. Although Huawei is said to be proposing the chips in the low thousands, they are not quite sure of the numbers, and no commitments have been made yet.
In addition to chip exports, Huawei is also selling remote access to CloudMatrix 384, an AI computing system that employs advanced chips. The system is not exportable because of supply restrictions.
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The Middle East is a growing market for AI chips, attracting investment from global tech companies like Nvidia. When U.S. President Donald Trump visited the region in 2017, he obtained $600 billion in firm commitments from Saudi Arabia for American companies, indicating how important the region is for leadership in the global market.
However, Huawei Technologies is also focused on supplying its 910C chips to Chinese companies that don't have access to U.S. chips because of export bans. The U.S. has regularly limited China's access to advanced chips based on national security and military reasons.
An Nvidia spokesperson stated, "With the current export controls, we are effectively out of the China datacenter market, which is now served only by competitors such as Huawei".
