In the wake of the United States' export controls on advanced chips, China's push for self-sufficiency in artificial intelligence processors is gaining remarkable momentum, with at least nine domestic chip companies having surpassed a significant threshold of 10,000 units in terms of order shipments, according to experts and executives.

This 10,000-chip club signals that domestic AI chips are gaining tangible market traction based on their performance, stability and cost. It heralds a shift from mere scale competition to a more comprehensive battle encompassing software ecosystems, commercial services and sustained reliability, experts said.

The cohort includes the in-house chip divisions of tech heavyweights such as Huawei's Ascend, Baidu's Kunlun and Alibaba's T-head, alongside listed or soon-to-be-listed AI chip specialists such as Cambricon, Moore Threads, Enflame and Iluvatar CoreX. Even some startups, including Sunrise and Tsingmicro, have crossed this volume threshold.