4 September 2026
DeepSeek plans 160,000 Huawei chips for Chinese data center project
First reported
Bloomberg and The Decoder ran this on , all on the same day.
- DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, plans to install at least 160,000 of Huawei's Ascend-950DT chips in a new data center in Inner Mongolia to run inference, the process of using an already-trained model to generate outputs.
- DeepSeek still relies on Nvidia hardware for training, the computationally heavier process of teaching an AI model, meaning this order alone does not reduce Chinese dependence on American chips for all AI work.
- Huawei likely cannot deliver the full order for over a year due to production constraints and shortages of HBM3E, specialized high-speed memory that powers AI processors.
- China's memory maker CXMT began producing small batches of HBM3E for the first time, but lags three to five years behind Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron in memory technology maturity.
- The order reflects China's broader government effort to build a domestic semiconductor industry capable of supporting AI development without relying entirely on foreign suppliers.
Reported by Bloomberg, The Decoder, Bloomberg