Deepseek reportedly had to fall back on Nvidia chips for new model

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek ran into trouble developing its new flagship model and had to switch to Nvidia chips. According to insiders, Deepseek initially tried using chips from Huawei and other Chinese manufacturers last year, reports the Wall Street Journal. But the results weren't good enough. The company ended up switching to allegedly smuggled Nvidia chips for some training tasks, which finally got things moving. The new model is expected to ship in the coming weeks.

At a recent conference in Beijing, leading Chinese AI researchers admitted that Chinese AI models won't be able to keep pace with US companies without access to better hardware. Justin Lin from Alibaba's Qwen team put the odds of overtaking OpenAI or Anthropic within three to five years at 20 percent at best. Meanwhile, the Chinese government is pushing to cut US chip imports to boost domestic production.