BEIJING (AP) — China's 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 outperform global leaders despite relying on less powerful domestic semiconductors.
China is racing to develop its own technology as America restricts what can be sold to China, including its most advanced chips. At the same time, the Chinese government has reportedly told companies to stop buying some American chips as it seeks to transform China into a global tech leader and one that is less reliant on imported components.
Huawei, at the forefront of efforts to develop home-grown technology, said at an annual customer event in Shanghai that it would launch new “superpods" in late 2026 and late 2027. That's computer industry lingo for a group of interconnected computers that, in Huawei's case, combines the power of thousands of chips.
That immense power is needed to run models in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, an area of hot competition between the U.S. and China.
“This is a significant milestone,” said Charlie Dai, a technology analyst at the research firm Forrester Research. "It signals a stronger push toward self-reliance and resilience in the face of export restrictions.”
Huawei announced plans to release the Atlas 950 and 960 superpods over the next two years. Dozens of the “SuperPoDs,” as Huawei brands them, could be connected to form what Huawei said would be the world’s most powerful “SuperClusters.”
The 950 and 960 are the most powerful superpods in the world and would remain so for years to come, a company news release said, based on product road maps from others in the industry.
The challenge for China is how to keep pace with American competitors such as Open AI and Google without access to the world's most powerful semiconductors, notably those from America's market-leading Nvidia. The answer has been to use many more chips and develop the architecture to make them work well together.
“Our strategy is to create a new computing architecture, and develop computing SuperPoDs and SuperClusters, to sustainably meet long-term demand for computing power,” Eric Xu, the current rotating chairman of Huawei, told the customer conference, according to a transcript provided by the company.
Huawei, based in Shenzhen in southern China, also announced plans to launch new AI chips in its Ascend series over the next three years. The Atlas 950 and 960 superpods would be based on the Ascend 950 and 960 chips, due out in 2026 and 2027. A planned Ascend 970 chip could follow in 2028.
A visitor takes photos of the Huawei Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD exhibited at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China, July 26, 2025. (Chinatopix Via AP) CHINA OUT
Visitors pass by the Huawei Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD exhibited at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China, July 28, 2025. (Chinatopix Via AP) CHINA OUT
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a reversal from previous years' pollution reductions, the United States spewed 2.4% more heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels in 2025 than in the year before, researchers calculated in a study released Tuesday.
The increase in greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to a combination of a cool winter, the explosive growth of data centers and cryptocurrency mining and higher natural gas prices, according to the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm. Environmental policy rollbacks by President Donald Trump’s administration were not significant factors in the increase because they were only put in place this year, the study authors said. Heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas are the major cause of worsening global warming, scientists say.
American emissions of carbon dioxide and methane had dropped 20% from 2005 to 2024, with a few one- or two-year increases in the overall downward trend. Traditionally, carbon pollution has risen alongside economic growth, but efforts to boost cleaner energy in recent years decoupled the two, so emissions would drop as gross domestic product rose.
But that changed last year with pollution actually growing faster than economic activity, said study co-author Ben King, a director in Rhodium's energy group. He estimated the U.S. put 5.9 billion tons (5.35 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide equivalent in the air in 2025, which is 139 million tons (126 million metric tons) more than in 2024.
The cold 2025 winter meant more heating of buildings, which often comes from natural gas and fuel oil that are big greenhouse gas emitters, King said. A significant and noticeable jump in electricity demand from data centers and cryptocurrency mining meant more power plants producing energy. That included plants using coal, which creates more carbon pollution than other fuel sources.
A rise in natural gas prices helped create an 13% increase in coal power, which had shrunk by nearly two-thirds since its peak in 2007, King said.
“It’s not like this is a huge rebound,” King said. “We’re not sitting here claiming that coal is back and going to dominate the sector or anything like that. But we did see this increase and that was a large part of why emissions went up in the power sector.”
King said the list of more than two dozen proposed rollbacks of American environmental policies by the Trump administration hadn't been in place long enough to have an effect in 2025, but may be more noticeable in future years.
“It’s one year of data so far,” King said. “So we need to see the extent to which this trend sustains.”
Solar power generation jumped 34%, pushing it past hydroelectric power, with zero-carbon emitting energy sources now supplying 42% of American power, Rhodium found. It will be interesting to see what happens as the Trump administration ends solar and wind subsidies and discourages their use, King said.
"The economic case for adding renewables is quite strong still," King said. “This stuff is cost-competitive in a lot of places. Try as they might, this administration can’t alter the fundamental economics of this stuff.”
Before the Trump administration took office, the Rhodium team projected that in 2035 U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would have fallen between 38% and 56% compared to 2005 levels, King said. Now, the projected pollution drop is expected to be about one-third less, he calculated.
Others who were not involved in the Rhodium report said last year's increase in emissions is an ominous sign.
“Unfortunately, the 2025 U.S. emission increase is likely a harbinger of what’s to come as the U.S. federal leadership continues to make what amounts to a huge unforced economic error by favoring legacy fossil fuels when the rest of the world is going all in on mobility and power generation using low-carbon technology, primarily based on renewables and batteries,” said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck.
Overpeck said that favoring fossil fuels will harm both the U.S. economy and air quality.
Longtime climate change activist Bill McKibben said bluntly: “It's so incredibly stupid that the U.S. is going backwards on this stuff."
The Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement it wasn't familiar with the Rhodium Group report and is “carrying out our core mission of protecting human health.”
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The Jeffrey Energy Center coal-fired power plant operates at sunset near Emmett, Kan., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
