Checking in on one of the most amazing companies in the world, Huawei.
From Bloomberg via The Edge - Malaysia, September 4:
DeepSeek plans to deploy at least 160,000 of Huawei Technologies Co’s top accelerators at a massive data centre it’s building in Inner Mongolia, which could create one of the largest known clusters of Huawei artificial intelligence (AI) chips and advance China’s efforts to replace Nvidia Corp.
The AI pioneer intends to use Huawei’s next-generation Ascend 950DT chips for operating its models, though the timeline for installation will depend on Huawei’s production capabilities, according to people familiar with the matter. The startup doesn’t currently plan to use the 950DT chips for training, one of the people said, even though Huawei designed and marketed these processors to serve that more demanding function. While DeepSeek tried to train its previous models on Huawei chips, it has so far relied on Nvidia accelerators for this crucial step.
DeepSeek wants to purchase more of Huawei’s best chips, according to the people, but China’s semiconductor champion doesn’t currently have the production capacity. Shortages of components such as top-end memory will cap Huawei’s output of the 950DT at the low hundreds-of-thousands this year, one of the people said. Huawei is balancing demand from other clients and trying to export small volumes overseas, so fulfilling DeepSeek’s order could take more than a year, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential deal.
If completed as envisioned, the Inner Mongolia hub will be key to driving AI development at DeepSeek, which is in talks to raise billions of dollars to build out its infrastructure. The installation would dwarf other publicly known clusters of Huawei’s Ascend processors, a meaningful step as China tries to wean itself off Nvidia components. By the time it comes online, according to one person with knowledge of Huawei’s production capabilities, China could have several clusters of that size.
DeepSeek did not respond to requests for comment and a Huawei spokesperson had no immediate comment.
More than one hundred thousand chips in a single facility would put DeepSeek’s ambitions in the ballpark of the data centres Western companies now routinely build — albeit China’s would be filled with less capable processors. Nvidia’s accelerators are the global standard for training and running AI models, but are largely prohibited from sale to China without US permission....
....MUCH MORE
Related:
December 2025 - Chips: China's Huawei May Have Found A Way Around ASML's Technology
April 29 - "Big Chinese tech firms scramble to secure Huawei AI chips after DeepSeek V4 launch, sources say"
A few of my favorite Huawei stories:
July 2025 - "The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company"
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In 2018 Canada arrested Huawei's Chief Financial Officer at the request of the U.S. for potentially criminal financial wheeling and dealing. She had business to take care of back in China and offered her two Canadian homes as surety that she would return.
When the Canadian officials in charge of the case said that wasn't enough she made an enhanced bail offer: "As Huawei CFO Offers Husband, Children For Bail Collateral, Some Background"
And finally, the first line of our intro and the last line of the outro from September 2025's Chips: "Huawei lays out multi-year AI accelerator roadmap and claims it makes Earth’s mightiest clusters":
This is the one Nvidia's Jensen Huang thinks about...
