Who's who · Chips & compute
Huawei Ascend
Huawei's line of AI chips and the SuperPoD systems built from them
At a glance
- Founded
- 2018
- Based in
- Shenzhen, China
- People
- David Wang, Deputy chairman and rotating chairman, Huawei; Sabrina Meng, Rotating chairwoman, Huawei
- Known for
- Ascend 910C, Ascend 950, Atlas 950 SuperPoD, CANN
- Funding
- Part of Huawei, which is 100% owned by its employees
- Parent
- Huawei
- Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoDs deployed
- 1,000+ (Sep 2026)
- Website
- https://www.hiascend.com
Ascend is Huawei's line of AI processors, which it calls NPUs (neural processing units), and the Atlas systems built from them. Huawei pairs the chips with CANN, its software stack, which has moved to community-driven open-source development, and Ascend is officially supported as a PyTorch accelerator.
Huawei launched the Ascend 310 in 2018 and the Ascend 910 in 2019, followed by the 910B and 910C. The 910C powers the Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD, launched in March 2025 with up to 384 chips, of which more than 1,000 have been deployed. Huawei's strategy is to link very large numbers of chips into SuperPoDs, groups that work as one computer. The Atlas 950 SuperPoD, with up to 8,192 Ascend 950DT chips, is now in large-scale commercial use.
Huawei releases one new Ascend generation a year. The Ascend 950PR was due in the first quarter of 2026 and the 950DT in the fourth. In September 2026 it said the Ascend 960DT would arrive in the first quarter of 2027, ahead of plan, followed by the 960PR in the third quarter, the Ascend 970 in 2028 and the Ascend 980 in 2029. Huawei, based in Shenzhen, is wholly owned by its employees.
Sources
- Huawei, Groundbreaking SuperPoD interconnect: leading a new paradigm for AI infrastructure, 2025-09-18
- Huawei, Advancing the agentic world, building a solid silicon foundation, 2026-09-17
- Huawei, Huawei releases 2025 annual report, 2026-03-31
- Huawei, Corporate information, 2026-10-02
Facts last checked 2026-10-02