Huawei plans to roll out world's most powerful AI computing clusters with less powerful chips
Huawei says Atlas 950/960-based SuperPods will form the world's most powerful AI computing clusters by 2026–27, despite relying on domestic semiconductors amid U.S. export controls.
BEIJING — Huawei Technologies said Thursday that it would roll out the world's most powerful AI computing clusters over the next two years as it seeks to outpace global leaders despite relying on less powerful domestic semiconductors. The plan comes as the United States tightens export controls on advanced chips to China, and as Beijing pushes to reduce reliance on imports through a broader self-sufficiency drive in technology.
At a Shanghai annual customer conference, Huawei announced that it would launch new "SuperPods" in late 2026 and late 2027. The company described SuperPods as groups of interconnected computers that pool thousands of chips to power AI models, with dozens of such pods potentially connected to form what Huawei calls "SuperClusters." Huawei said the Atlas 950 and 960 superpods would be based on Ascend 950 and 960 chips due out in 2026 and 2027.
"Our strategy is to create a new computing architecture, and develop computing SuperPods and SuperClusters, to sustainably meet long-term demand for computing power," Xu said, according to a transcript provided by Huawei. Huawei's release described the Atlas 950 and 960 as the most powerful superpods in the world and said they would remain so for years, based on product road maps from others in the industry.
The Atlas 950 and 960 would be powered by the Ascend 950 and 960 chips, with a planned Ascend 970 chip potentially following in 2028. Huawei also said it would launch new AI chips in its Ascend series over the next three years, part of a broader push to build a domestic AI computing stack as it competes with OpenAI and Google without access to Nvidia's leading semiconductors.
Analysts say the effort underscores China’s drive to bolster its own technology supply chain as the United States expands curbs on advanced chip exports. Huawei’s approach leans on parallelism—using many more chips and an architecture designed to coordinate them—to compensate for restrictions on more powerful components. The company did not disclose pricing or deployment timelines for the SuperPods or SuperClusters.