Huawei's AI strategy focuses on compute power and hardware revenue

At the Huawei Connect 2026 conference in Shanghai, rotating chairman Wang Tao emphasized that Huawei's AI strategy centers on compute power, with a focus on hardware monetization. He revealed that over 1,000 sets of the Ascend super nodes have been deployed, with the Ascend 950 super node already in large-scale commercial use. The Ascend 960 super node, the first to adopt NPO technology, will launch in the third quarter of 2027, with the Atlas 860 air-cooled variant set for the second quarter of 2027. Wang noted that the Ascend 950 chip architecture was unveiled at the 2025 Huawei Connect event, featuring enhanced vector computing, increased bandwidth, and support for Huawei's self-developed HBM. The Ascend 960 was originally scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2027.