“No other technology company has been able to work so successfully in as many complex and difficult sectors as Huawei has shown its capabilities.”
Chinese technology company Huawei has repeatedly faced obstacles due to US trade sanctions for years. Despite this, the country’s telecom giant has become one of the biggest competitors in the technology world, including China’s artificial intelligence or AI, behind the scenes.
The Shenzhen-based company has not only emerged as an alternative to US chipmaker giant Nvidia, but has also advanced in terms of revenue by using AI technology in the industrial sector, the American media outlet CNBC wrote in a report.
Paul Triolo, China expert and senior vice president of the consulting firm ‘DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group’, said, “Huawei has been forced to change the direction of its core business and expand its scope over the past decade due to various types of external pressures on the company.”
Because of this growth, the Chinese company is now working on everything from operating systems and smart cars to the technologies required for the AI revolution. They are working on technologies such as advanced semiconductor or chip manufacturing, data centers and large language models.
Triolo said, “No other technology company has been able to work so successfully in as many complex and difficult sectors as Huawei has shown its capabilities.”
This year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declared, "Huawei is now one of the largest technology companies in the world." He warned that if the US continues to ban chip exports to China, Huawei may replace Nvidia there.
Nvidia became the most valuable company in the world last week when its market value surpassed $4 trillion. For training generative AI models and applications, the company's cutting-edge chips and "CUDA" computing system continue to be industry standards.
CNBC writes, but this gap is now closing. Because Huawei is not only working in all sectors, but also doing it very well. Although it is difficult to challenge US AI giants like Nvidia, Huawei's history shows that they should never be taken lightly.
From selling telephone switches to China's national pride
Currently, more than 200,000 people are employed by Huawei in many countries around the world. However, the company's beginnings were very modest. Tha company was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, a businessman, in a modest apartment in Shenzhen, China. At the time, it was a small telephone switch sales company.
Huawei has expanded its business in the telecom sector, first targeting underdeveloped markets such as Africa, the Middle East, Russia and South America. Later, the company's business gradually spread to places like Europe.
By 2019, Huawei had become a leading company in the market by taking advantage of the opportunity to use 5G technology around the world. The Chinese business grew to become one of the biggest producers of smartphones worldwide during that period. Through its chip design subsidiary, HiSilicon, Huawei was simultaneously designing smartphone chips.
However, as Huawei became more successful, the company faced sanctions from various countries outside China, especially the US government. The US has repeatedly complained that Huawei's technology could be a threat to their national security. The Chinese business has consistently refuted these claims, though.
Huawei's business suffered a major setback in 2019. At that time, the US included the company on its trade blacklist. As a result, all US companies were forced to stop doing business with Huawei.
The consumer products division of Huawei, which was once the company's biggest revenue generator, experienced significant losses when the sanctions went into effect. The division's revenue in 2021 fell by half from the previous year, to about $34 billion.
Despite the US sanctions, Huawei continued to make significant progress in AI chip technology. In 2020, Huawei also stopped getting chips from Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC due to additional US sanctions. However, a year earlier, in 2029, they officially introduced their own AI chip called Ascend 910.
CNBC wrote that this chip was part of the company's plan to provide complete solutions for all types of AI use and become a major AI computing power supplier.
However, the way the US has targeted Huawei has turned the company into a kind of 'martyr' image in China. Earlier, in 2018, Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's CFO and daughter of founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested in Canada on charges of violating sanctions on Iran. Since then, Huawei has started to receive widespread attention in China.
As the US-China tech war escalates and China is banned from using advanced chip technology, the government has also chosen Huawei as a “suitable institution” to lead the country’s AI competition. As a result, the company is receiving more encouragement and state support for its AI plans.
“These US export restrictions have brought Huawei closer to the Chinese government, which is something Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei always wanted to avoid,” Triolo said. Thus, Huawei’s AI hardware
