(Reuters) -China's chipmakers are seeking to triple the country's output of artificial intelligence chips in 2026, rushing to reduce dependence on Nvidia, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

Huawei aims to begin production at a plant dedicated to making AI chips by year end, with two more facilities set to launch in 2026, the newspaper said citing people familiar with the matter.

The plants are designed to specifically support Huawei, but their ownership remains unclear. Huawei told the FT that it did not have plans for its own plants.

The combined output from the three potential plants could surpass the current production capacity of similar lines at China's top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), the FT said.

SMIC plans to next year double manufacturing capacity for 7 nanometre chips, for which Huawei is its largest customer, the report said.

Huawei and SMIC did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Beijing is accelerating work on domestic AI chips, with companies developing processors that rival the performance of Nvidia's China-special H20, about which the government has expressed security concerns.

Reuters reported in November that Huawei planned to start mass-producing its most advanced AI chip in the first quarter of 2025 despite grappling with the impact of U.S. restrictions.

(Reporting by Dheeraj Kumar and Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru)