DeepSeek to purchase 160,000 Huawei AI chips for new data center

DeepSeek is reportedly planning to purchase 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT AI accelerators to deploy in a new gigawatt-scale data center located in Inner Mongolia. The order, estimated to be worth approximately $2.56 billion, marks a significant shift away from Nvidia hardware for the company’s inference needs.

While the Ascend 950DT chips are designed for both training and inference, DeepSeek intends to use them primarily for model inference. The company has previously relied on Nvidia accelerators for training tasks. DeepSeek’s leadership has noted that while Huawei’s hardware may require more units to match the performance of a single Nvidia GPU, the technology is increasingly viable for their requirements.

Fulfilling such a massive order may take over a year due to Huawei’s limited production capacity and shortages of high-end memory components. DeepSeek has reportedly sought assistance from Beijing to expedite the allocation and delivery of these chips. The Inner Mongolia facility is part of a broader infrastructure expansion, with the planned capacity expected to consume enough electricity to power roughly 750,000 homes.