BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Baidu ordered artificial intelligence chips from Huawei this year, two people familiar with the matter said, adding to signs that U.S. pressure is prompting Chinese acceptance of the firm's products as an alternative to Nvidia's. One of the people said Baidu, one of China's leading AI firms, which operates the Ernie large language model (LLM), placed the order in August, ahead of widely anticipated new rules by the U.S. government that in October tightened restrictions on exports of chips and chip tools to China, including those of U.S. chip giant Nvidia. Baidu ordered 1,600 of Huawei Technologies' 910B Ascend AI chips - which the Chinese firm developed as an alternative to Nvidia's A100 chip - for 200 servers, the source said, adding that by October, Huawei had delivered more 60% of the order, or about 1,000 chips, to Baidu.