Alibaba and ByteDance to Buy Huawei’s 950PR Chips; Intel Debuts $949 GPU
Alibaba and ByteDance plan to order Huawei’s 950PR AI chip, with Huawei targeting 750,000 unit shipments in 2026 at 50,000–70,000 yuan ($6,900–$9,700), leveraging CUDA compatibility. Intel launched its Arc Pro B70 workstation GPU at $949 with 32GB GDDR6, undercutting Nvidia’s $1,800 RTX Pro 4000 while boosting local AI performance.
1. Huawei’s 950PR Chip Orders
Alibaba and ByteDance are set to place orders for Huawei’s new 950PR AI processor, marking a significant win for Huawei after its Ascend 910C struggled with major private tech firms. Huawei aims to ship 750,000 units in 2026, priced between 50,000 and 70,000 yuan, and designed for plug-and-play integration with the CUDA ecosystem to accelerate inference workloads.
2. Intel Arc Pro B70 Launch
Intel introduced the Arc Pro B70 workstation GPU at $949, featuring 32GB of GDDR6 memory and performance claims tailored to on-premises AI tasks. Priced well below Nvidia’s $1,800 RTX Pro 4000 and AMD’s $1,299 Radeon AI Pro R9700, the B70 targets professionals moving AI workloads away from cloud data centers to local machines.
3. Implications for Nvidia
These developments introduce fresh competition in both data center and edge AI markets, potentially eroding Nvidia’s pricing power as alternative solutions gain traction. Huawei’s CUDA-compatible chip and Intel’s competitively priced GPU could pressure Nvidia’s unit growth and margins, especially in inference-driven applications and localized AI deployments.