The Chinese technology giant’s latest Ascend 950PR processor, which entered mass production in March, has captured the majority of orders for the year. An upgraded variant, the Ascend 950DT, is planned for launch in the fourth quarter.

The revenue surge has been supercharged by DeepSeek’s release of its V4 AI model on April 24, which was specifically optimised to run on Huawei’s Ascend chips.

The move triggered a wave of procurement activity across China’s largest technology companies, with Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent among those racing to secure supply. Huawei confirmed that its entire Ascend SuperNode product line now supports DeepSeek V4, and that the chips were used in training the V4-Flash model.

The backdrop is China’s accelerating push toward semiconductor self-sufficiency. With US export restrictions continuing to limit Chinese firms’ access to Nvidia’s most advanced processors, domestic alternatives have moved from contingency to primary strategy for many Chinese cloud and AI operators.

Analysts at TrendForce forecast the Chinese high-end AI chip market will grow by more than 60% in 2026, with domestically produced chips potentially capturing around half of that market.

Huawei reported group revenues of 880.9 billion yuan ($127.8 billion) for 2025, with record R&D spending of 192.3 billion yuan. Its Ascend developer ecosystem now counts more than four million developers.

Reuters said it could not independently verify the FT’s figures.

The numbers offer a live illustration of the geopolitical AI fragmentation that the Global Leaders’ Forum warned this week is reshaping cross-border connectivity demand and the trust and sovereignty requirements that international carriers will need to meet to serve it.

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