AI / LLMChina
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JOURNEY · DETAIL
HiSilicon: From Spare Tire to Kirin Chip, Domestic Semiconductor's Survival Struggle Under Sanctions
Founded: Ren Zhengfei, He Tingbo · HiSilicon Technologies Co., Ltd.
JOURNEY
Key Fields
FIELD STAMPSIndustryAI / LLM
RegionChina
ScaleGiant
ChannelOther
Origin
In 2004, Huawei established HiSilicon, initially planted as a 'spare tire' chess piece by Ren Zhengfei to reduce dependence on overseas chip suppliers. In 2009, HiSilicon launched its first mobile phone chip, the K3V1, using a 110nm process. Due to poor performance, it was abandoned by Huawei's own mobile phone department and nearly stillborn. What truly brought HiSilicon back to life was the initiation of the Kirin 910 in 2012. Ren Zhengfei made the executive decision that they must build their own chips; even if performance lagged, iteration had to persist, as Huawei—starting from communication equipment—deeply understood the cost of a supply chain controlled by others. In 2019, the U.S. placed Huawei on the Entity List, and HiSilicon transitioned from a spare tire to active duty. He Tingbo issued an all-employee letter titled 'The Darkest Hour of HiSilicon,' announcing that the spare tire was activated overnight, and since then HiSilicon has become Huawei's core weapon in fighting sanctions.
Milestones
2004
Inception Turning Point
In 2004, Huawei established HiSilicon, with Ren Zhengfei deciding to invest in chip design. The initial team consisted of only a few hundred people. In 2009, the first mobile phone chip K3V1 was launched, using a 110nm process. Its performance had a vast gap compared to Qualcomm's products of the same period, leading to it being abandoned by its own mobile phone department and receiving almost no attention. This failure made HiSilicon realize that blindly chasing process routes was unviable, and they had to design differentiated chips based on their own product requirements, laying the groundwork for the later Kirin series.
2012
Transformation Turning Point
In 2012, the Kirin 910 project was approved, marking the first time HiSilicon truly defined chips for mobile scenarios, integrating its self-developed Balong baseband to create differentiation in power consumption and connection performance. In 2014, the Kirin 920 powered the Honor 6, surpassing Qualcomm's Snapdragon 801 in benchmark scores for the first time. The Mate 7 powered by the Kirin 925 became an overnight sensation with annual shipments exceeding 7 million units, marking the beginning of Huawei's high-end smartphone push, and HiSilicon transformed from a money-burning department into the core competitiveness of Huawei's terminal business.
2019
Crisis Turning Point
The U.S. Department of Commerce placed Huawei on the Entity List, hanging the risk of TSMC cutting off supply overhead. HiSilicon President He Tingbo issued an all-employee letter titled 'The Darkest Hour of HiSilicon,' announcing the spare tire plan was activated overnight. Self-developed chips like the Kirin 990 and Balong 5000 were forced to shoulder all terminal shipments. That year, HiSilicon's revenue grew by over 40% year-on-year, breaking through 10 billion USD, but the external supply chain fracture also forced Huawei to embark on a path of comprehensive self-developed substitution, causing R&D investment to skyrocket.
2020
Sanctions Escalation Failure
The second round of U.S. sanctions sealed off TSMC's advanced process foundry channels. The Kirin 9000 became the last flagship chip using the 5nm process, with inventory only sufficient to last about two years. Huawei's smartphone shipments plummeted from a peak of 189 million units in 2020 to about 30 million in 2022, and HiSilicon's revenue shrank from the tens of billions of dollars level to single-digit billions, with rumors of HiSilicon being split up circulating at one point. This was the darkest period since HiSilicon's founding, and even He Tingbo admitted that the team faced enormous uncertainty at the time.
2023
Survival Struggle Turning Point
In 2023, Huawei mass-produced the Kirin 9000S using SMIC's N+2 process (equivalent to 7nm). The Mate 60 series went on sale without a prior launch event, igniting the market, and actual tested network speeds reached 5G levels, declaring that Huawei had unblocked the domestic advanced process chain under sanctions. In 2024, HiSilicon's revenue rebounded to about 7 billion USD, Kirin chip shipments recovered to the tens of millions level, and the Ascend 910B captured about 30% of the domestic AI computing power market, taking the most difficult step toward domestic semiconductor independence.
2026
New Pathway Growth
In May 2026, Eric Xu publicly disclosed the full story of the chip breakthrough for the first time, proposing 'He's Law'—as Moore's Law approaches its physical limits, Huawei continues performance improvements through system-level optimization and architectural innovation. In August 2026, Richard Yu officially announced the debut of the 'Tao Chip' on September 7, followed closely by the Mate 90 series, with both flagship lines equipped across the board. HiSilicon Chief Scientist Liao Heng made a public appearance praising DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, demonstrating Huawei's new layout in AI chip and algorithm synergy, with the Ascend series having formed a complete AI computing power product matrix.
Turning Points
- In 2012, the Kirin 910 project was approved, marking HiSilicon's shift from copying Qualcomm to defining chips for its own mobile scenarios—a complete strategic turning point.
- In May 2019, the U.S. Entity List landed, activating the spare tire overnight, and HiSilicon moved from behind the scenes to the forefront, becoming Huawei's core asset to combat sanctions.
- After TSMC cut off supplies in 2020, HiSilicon was forced to accept the reality of 'having no wafers available for tape-out,' turning instead to bet on the domestic supply chain, which was a critical life-or-death choice.
- In 2023, the mass production of the Kirin 9000S proved the feasibility of the domestic 7nm process chain, bringing Huawei's smartphone business back to life, and HiSilicon shifted from defense to counterattack.
- In 2026, the 'Tao Chip' was released, moving He's Law from theory to product, and Huawei found its own performance enhancement pathway outside of Moore's Law.
Failures & Pitfalls
- In 2009, the K3V1 chip was abandoned by Huawei's own mobile phone department due to poor performance, making HiSilicon's first product nearly stillborn and proving that without technological self-reliance, one can only remain a spare tire.
- In 2020, the second round of U.S. sanctions closed off TSMC's foundry channels, making the Kirin 9000 a swan song. HiSilicon's revenue shrank by over 60% within two years, and high-end chips fell into a two-year vacuum period.
- Between 2019 and 2022, HiSilicon attempted to open up the enterprise market through Kunpeng server chips, but restricted by ecosystem shortcomings and sanction limits, shipment volumes fell far short of expectations, forcing a strategic contraction.
- Early Kirin chips lagged behind Qualcomm in the GPU and ISP fields for a long time, requiring Huawei phones to use external GPU solutions to make up for gaming performance until the Kirin 990 solved this shortcoming, missing the mobile gaming explosion dividend period from 2015 to 2017.
关键成功要素
- Ren Zhengfei insisted on self-developed chips starting in 2004, refusing to give up even after years of consecutive losses; the spare tire strategy ensured they had cards to play when sanctions arrived.
- He Tingbo led HiSilicon's growth from a small team of hundreds to an R&D legion of over 7,000, with R&D investment accounting for over 40% of HiSilicon's revenue year-round.
- Huawei's chips are not single-point breakthroughs, but system-level collaborative designs built around three major scenarios: smartphones, base stations, and AI servers, with Kirin, Balong, Ascend, and Kunpeng forming a complete matrix.
- In 2023, the Kirin 9000S unblocked the domestic 7nm process chain, verifying that China's semiconductor industry could still achieve advanced process breakthroughs under the extreme pressure of U.S. sanctions.
Lessons
- The true moat is not a single technological lead, but the independent controllability of the supply chain; Huawei traded a twenty-year spare tire plan for survival space under sanctions.
- Technology pathways cannot blindly follow industry leaders; the failure of the Kirin 910 benchmarked against Qualcomm Snapdragon proved that differentiated scenario definition is more important than a parameter race.
- When crisis strikes, organizational resilience determines life or death; He Tingbo's all-employee letter 'The Darkest Hour of HiSilicon' stabilized morale in 2019, resulting in zero core technical backbones leaving the team.
- Sanctions are not an end point, but a starting point that forces innovation; the mass production of the Kirin 9000S two years earlier than expected was an unconventional breakthrough forged under pressure.
Core Data
- 营收：HiSilicon's revenue was about 11 billion USD in 2020, bottomed at about 4 billion USD in 2022, and rebounded to about 7 billion USD in 2024 (based on public data sources, independent review unverified)
- 团队规模：HiSilicon's employees grew from several hundred in 2004 to over 7,000 (based on public data sources, independent review unverified)
- 研发投入占比：HiSilicon's R&D investment ratio to revenue has consistently exceeded 40% year-round (based on public data sources, independent review unverified)
- 手机出货量：Huawei's smartphone shipments were 240 million units in 2019, dropped to about 30 million in 2022, and rebounded to about 50 million in 2024 (based on public data sources, independent review unverified)
- 麒麟芯片出货量：2024 pieces [Note: literal translation of source text anomaly] (based on public data sources, independent review unverified)
- 昇腾智能芯片份额：In 2024, the Ascend 910B accounted for about 30% share in the domestic AI accelerator card market (based on public data sources, independent review unverified)
- 融资额：As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Huawei, HiSilicon has not raised independent financing. Huawei's R&D investment in 2023 was 164.7 billion RMB (based on public data sources, independent review unverified)
Competitors / Peers
HiSilicon's most direct benchmarks in the smartphone SoC field are Qualcomm Snapdragon and MediaTek Dimensity; the performance of the Kirin 9000S has approached the level of the Snapdragon 888, though its process technology still lags by two generations. In the AI computing power chip market, the Ascend series competes head-on with Nvidia A100/H100. Although a gap remains in single-card performance, relying on Huawei's MindSpore ecosystem and the growth of domestic computing power demand, it captured about 30% of the domestic AI accelerator card market share in 2024. Apple's A-series chips and Google Tensor are also important mobile reference points for HiSilicon, but the latter two also rely on TSMC for foundry production. HiSilicon has no direct peer benchmark on the path of complete localization, and its survival model under sanctions has instead become an important sample study for the global semiconductor industry.