ByteDance and Alibaba Confirm Plans to Order Huawei Ascend 950PR AI Chips

Following a Reuters report initially published March 27, ByteDance and Alibaba confirmed plans to place substantial orders for Huawei's new Ascend 950PR AI inference chip after successful internal testing. The 950PR represents a significant advance over the Ascend 910C: it is optimized for inference workloads and improves CUDA ecosystem compatibility — removing the main adoption barrier that had previously limited Huawei chip uptake at Chinese hyperscalers with existing CUDA-based model deployments. Huawei plans to ship approximately 750,000 Ascend 950PR units in 2026, with mass production beginning in April and volume shipments in H2 2026. Pricing is approximately 50,000 yuan (~$6,900) for the DDR memory version and 70,000 yuan (~$9,700) for the premium HBM version. The orders reflect a strategic acceleration of China's AI compute stack localization as US H20 chip restrictions (effective April 2025) eliminate remaining Nvidia options for Chinese buyers.