Huawei

Bloomberg reported that DeepSeek intended to deploy at least 160,000 of Huawei's next-generation Ascend 950DT accelerators at a data centre it was building in Inner Mongolia, using them to operate its models, which would be one of the largest known clusters of Huawei AI chips. People familiar with the matter said the timeline depended on Huawei's production capacity and that DeepSeek did not currently plan to use the chips for training. DeepSeek did not respond to requests for comment and Huawei had no immediate comment.

Reuters reported that Beijing had issued guidance requiring any new data centre project that had taken state funds to use only domestically developed AI chips, and that projects less than 30 percent complete were told to remove foreign chips already installed or cancel planned purchases. More advanced projects would be assessed case by case. The rule reached Nvidia's H20, the part built specifically to satisfy the U.S. rules, and applied to a sector that had taken more than US$100 billion of state money.

The Department of Commerce announced the rescission of the Biden-era AI Diffusion rule two days before its compliance date, alongside guidance on the risks of using Chinese advanced computing chips, including specific Huawei Ascend parts, and on preventing diversion of U.S. chips.

Reuters reported that Nvidia had cut H20 prices in China, where oversupply left the chip selling at more than a 10 percent discount to Huawei's competing part. The first export-compliant chip Nvidia built for China after the October 2023 rules was therefore competing on price against the domestic alternative it was meant to hold off.