Huawei unveiled its next-generation Ascend 960 AI chips at its Huawei Connect summit in Shanghai on September 17, 2026, accelerating its roadmap to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in AI computing amid US export restrictions. The Ascend 960DT and 960PR variants are slated for commercial availability in 2027, with each new generation aiming to double the computing power of its predecessor. DeepSeek is already deploying 160,000 of Huawei’s current-generation Ascend 950DT chips, though the hardware still lags Nvidia’s for training frontier models.