(Image credit: Getty / Wong Yu Liang)
China's official technology security bodies on Tuesday certified nine domestically designed AI processors for state procurement, according to the South China Morning Post, creating a brand-new "AI training and inference chips" category under the country's Anke security certification framework. The approved products include Huawei's Ascend 310 and Ascend 910 processors, Alibaba's T-Head Zhenwu M530 and M890, and chips from Biren Technology, Hygon Information Technology, Iluvatar CoreX, MetaX, and Moore Threads. Two of China's most prominent AI chip developers, Cambricon Technologies and Baidu-backed Kunlunxin, didn’t appear on the list.The certifications are valid for three years and were issued jointly by the China Information Technology Security Evaluation Centre and the National Secrecy Science and Technology Evaluation Centre. Their approvals function as a de facto procurement catalog for government agencies, central state-owned enterprises, and other entities covered by Beijing's Xinchuang initiative, the long-running campaign to replace Western hardware and software across sensitive Chinese IT systems.The new list represents a substantial expansion from China's initial foray into certifying domestic AI hardware. In December, Beijing added only Huawei and Cambricon to the Xinchuang procurement list (a separate state approval mechanism) for AI processors. Five months later, seven vendors now hold Anke security certification for nine separate chips. The Xinchuang program had previously focused on replacing Intel and AMD CPUs and Oracle databases in government systems, but AI accelerators are the newest addition to that.Cambricon's absence stands out given that the company was on the December list and is targeting 500,000 AI chip shipments in 2026. An anonymous source told the SCMP that companies can choose whether to submit products for testing, so exclusion doesn’t necessarily indicate a failed evaluation. Each chip must pass tests under the Anke V3.0 requirements to qualify.Chinese chipmakers continue to eat into Nvidia's position in the domestic market. Chinese semiconductor firms delivered 1.65 million AI GPUs in 2025 out of a total of 4 million units, claiming 41% of local AI server shipments. Huawei alone shipped roughly 812,000 AI chips and is projecting $12 billion in AI processor revenue for 2026. Morgan Stanley estimates China's total AI chip market could reach $67 billion by 2030, with domestic supply covering roughly 76% of demand.Wafer fab capacity remains a big constraint, however, with all of the certified chipmakers competing for limited production slots at SMIC, whose most advanced stable node is its N+2 process, which is roughly equivalent to 7nm. SMIC reported overall utilization rates above 93% for 2025 and spent $8.1 billion in capex last year, with plans to hold that level through 2026.
