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AI data center expansion and domestic hardware shift

Updated 9 times since CLSTR started tracking revisions of this situation.

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2026-10-06 01:23 UTC → 2026-10-07 04:26 UTC · added removed

Inner Mongolia is becoming a central hub for China’s digital infrastructure due to its low energy costs, cooler climate, and proximity to Beijing. Major technology firms are increasingly establishing a presence in the region to support energy-intensive computing needs. ByteDance is reportedly in preliminary discussions to expand its computing infrastructure in Ulanqab’s Jining district, potentially integrating five to six gigawatts of new compute power. DeepSeek is advancing plans for a large-scale data center in Ulanqab that would deploy at least 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT AI accelerators. The order is estimated to be worth approximately $2.56 billion and marks a significant shift toward domestic hardware for the company’s inference needs. While DeepSeek has previously relied on Nvidia hardware for model training, 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. To support this transition, DeepSeek and Huawei have expanded their collaboration to develop a comprehensive AI software stack for Ascend processors, aiming to build an independent GPU ecosystem and reduce reliance on NVIDIA’s CUDA. This partnership has moved into hardware-level optimization, including a supernode system integrating 128 Ascend 950 chips. To further compete with Nvidia, the collaboration is expanding development tools for the Ascend platform. This includes optimizing both computation and communication for the supernode system and utilizing TileLang, an open-source high-level programming language for AI chips. TileLang is designed to simplify code logic and improve development efficiency, seeking to lower switching costs for developers moving to architectures outside of Nvidia. Recent developments indicate that DeepSeek and Huawei continue to co-develop programming infrastructure for the Ascend platform to facilitate this transition.

Versions

  1. 2026-10-07 04:26 UTC AI data center expansion and domestic hardware shift
  2. 2026-10-06 01:23 UTC AI data center expansion and domestic hardware shift
  3. 2026-10-03 02:21 UTC AI data center expansion and domestic hardware shift
  4. 2026-10-02 10:38 UTC AI data center expansion and domestic hardware shift
  5. 2026-10-02 10:37 UTC AI data center expansion and domestic hardware shift
  6. 2026-09-30 06:22 UTC AI data center expansion in Inner Mongolia
  7. 2026-09-30 04:32 UTC AI data center expansion in Inner Mongolia
  8. 2026-09-07 08:53 UTC AI data center expansion in Inner Mongolia
  9. 2026-09-05 10:54 UTC AI data center expansion in Inner Mongolia
  10. 2026-09-04 22:02 UTC AI data center expansion in Inner Mongolia

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