Huawei plans Latin America deployment of Ascend AI chips to rival US tech

Huawei Technologies is exploring the deployment of its latest Ascend AI chips in Latin America through its cloud and AI services, according to Mark Chen, president of Huawei Cloud Latin America. Chen confirmed this in an exclusive interview at the Rio Web Summit, though he declined to provide a timeline, noting that the Ascend 950 series chips are still in early deployment stages in China. The first chip in the family, the Ascend 950PR, launched commercially in China in March 2026 alongside the Atlas 350 computing cluster—a group of interconnected chips. It has already been adopted by major Chinese AI firms including Alibaba, ByteDance, and DeepSeek, the latter running its latest models on the chip.

This move would extend China's push for semiconductor self-reliance into Latin America, a region long courted by US suppliers like Nvidia. By offering Chinese-designed AI hardware through its cloud services, Huawei could provide an alternative to US-based GPU solutions, particularly for organizations seeking to avoid trade restrictions or diversify supply chains. However, with no confirmed timeline and the Ascend 950 series still ramping up domestically, the immediate impact remains uncertain. The announcement signals Huawei's long-term strategy to compete globally in AI infrastructure.