In a Bloomberg interview, Huang said Huawei’s AI chips and clusters are now on par with Nvidia’s top-end gear. He name-checked the CloudMatrix system, revealing it scales beyond the Grace Blackwell platform, which until now was Nvidia’s heavyweight offering. This is the first time the outfit has publicly acknowledged Huawei’s architecture as equivalent to its own in any way.

Huang said: “Huawei's technology, based on our best understanding at the moment, is probably comparable to an H200. They've been moving quite fast. They've also offered this new system called Cloud Matrix, which scales up to even a larger system than our latest generation, Grace Blackwell.”

Previously, Nvidia had dismissed talk of Huawei catching up as speculation, but Huang's comments make it clear the gap has closed alarmingly fast. With the Ascend 910C chip now holding its own against Nvidia's H200, top of the Hopper line, it seems the sanctions meant to cripple China’s AI ambitions have simply turbocharged domestic innovation.

Huawei was previously thought to be struggling to hit H100-level performance. Instead, it’s leapfrogged expectations and now looks to be shadowing Nvidia’s product cadence. For a company that once saw itself as irreplaceable in AI compute, that’s a big problem.

The admission also raises questions about Nvidia’s future in China. With the US choking exports and Chinese rivals now pumping out serious silicon, Nvidia could be boxed out of its largest growth market. The firm has already warned investors that ongoing restrictions might make it impossible to compete in China at all.

If Jensen is this candid on Bloomberg, you can bet the internal conversations are even grimmer. Huawei’s rise isn’t theoretical anymore.