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Chinese Tech Giants Scramble for Huawei AI Chips After DeepSeek V4 Launch
Reuters reports that after DeepSeek released its V4 model last week, major Chinese tech firms are rushing to secure supplies of Huawei's Ascend AI chips, underscoring surging demand for domestic AI hardware under US export controls.
Why it matters
Reuters reported on October 21 that major Chinese technology companies are scrambling to secure supplies of Huawei's AI chips after DeepSeek released its V4 model last week. DeepSeek's decision to optimize V4 specifically for Huawei's chips marks a strategic shift away from American semiconductor dependence and toward China's homegrown AI gear — a priority for Beijing as it seeks tech supremacy.
Last week Huawei said its Ascend supernode infrastructure, built on the Ascend 950 series chips, would fully support DeepSeek V4 models, and that the entire Ascend SuperNode product line had been adapted for V4 inference. Among Chinese chipmakers, the Ascend 950PR is the only domestic chip supporting a technique that processes AI calculations in a more compressed numerical format, handling more computations per second at a lower cost.
Cloud platforms launch in lockstep
Alibaba Cloud's Bailian platform made DeepSeek V4 available on the day it was released, offering the V4-Pro and V4-Flash variants with pricing matching DeepSeek's official rates. Tencent Cloud launched V4 preview services on its TokenHub platform the same day, deploying the model on both domestic nodes and its Singapore international gateway. The rapid deployment by major cloud platforms means millions of users and developers can now access V4, sharply increasing demand for the underlying chips.
Huawei, ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
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