🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

New hires may support China’s drive to rely less on Nvidia, though DeepSeek’s role remains uncertain

• DeepSeek is reportedly getting ready to run its V4 model on Huawei’s Ascend 950 PR processor, an AI chip from the Chinese tech giant Huawei. Its broader AI chip sourcing still remains unclear 1.
• A shift to Ascend would track China’s plan to build an AI software-and-chip ecosystem that leans less on Nvidia’s CUDA platform, the widely used software layer for AI computing. US export restrictions on high-end chips add pressure to that change 1.
• Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent have reportedly placed large orders for Huawei’s next-generation chips, totaling hundreds of thousands of units 1.
• TrendForce, a market research firm focused on the technology industry, wrote that V4 development slipped by several months. DeepSeek reportedly worked with Huawei and Cambricon, a Chinese AI chip designer, to rework the model’s underlying architecture with extensive adjustments and rewrites 1.

DeepSeek’s location choice ties to China’s cheaper electricity for scaling AI infrastructure

• Expanding into Inner Mongolia could give DeepSeek access to abundant, low-cost electricity for data centers 2.
• Some Chinese data centers now pay less than half what US data centers pay for electricity. That price gap helps offset weaker domestic chips by combining more of them into larger, more power-hungry clusters 2.
• Ulanqab is a national hub for green computing, with local data centers reaching an 84.57% green electricity usage rate. The region exceeded 135 gigawatts of installed wind plus solar power in 2024 3.
• The area also offers low-latency, or very fast, connections to major urban centers, with data transmission to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in 4.53 milliseconds 3.