Huawei chips spark component scramble
- Huawei’s Ascend 950 chip orders jumped on April 29 after DeepSeek’s V4 model launched on Huawei hardware, with ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba contacting Huawei. - DeepSeek’s V4 rollout pushed more AI queries onto Ascend systems as cloud platforms moved fast, tightening supply for China’s domestic Nvidia alternative. - The rush extends China’s shift toward homegrown AI stacks as U.S. export curbs squeeze Nvidia access. (reuters.com)
Chinese internet giants are rushing to buy Huawei’s Ascend 950 artificial intelligence chips after DeepSeek released a V4 model built to run on them. (reuters.com) Reuters reported on April 29 that ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba have approached Huawei about new Ascend 950 orders, citing three people familiar with the talks. The buying started after DeepSeek’s V4 launch sent more demand toward Huawei-based computing clusters. (reuters.com) (finance.yahoo.com) Huawei said on April 24 that its Ascend supernode built on Ascend 950 chips would fully support DeepSeek V4. DeepSeek released preview versions of V4-Pro and V4-Flash at roughly the same time. (techinasia.com) (api-docs.deepseek.com) An artificial intelligence chip is the engine that handles the math behind each prompt and reply. When a model gains users or gets cheaper to call, demand rises not just for software but for the servers, boards and power gear underneath it. (reuters.com) (api-docs.deepseek.com) DeepSeek cut the input cache-hit price across its application programming interface lineup to one-tenth of the launch price starting April 26, according to its pricing page. It also said V4-Pro is being offered at a 75% discount through at least May 31. (api-docs.deepseek.com) Those price cuts matter because cheaper inference usually means more queries, and more queries mean more chip time. Reuters said the rapid deployment by major cloud platforms put V4 in front of millions of users and developers. (reuters.com) Huawei’s Ascend line has become more important inside China as United States export controls have limited Chinese access to Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence chips. That has pushed Chinese cloud providers and model companies to test domestic substitutes faster. (reuters.com) (techinasia.com) The immediate risk is supply. Reuters said production is already struggling to keep up, which raises the odds of longer lead times for the chips and for adjacent electronics used in artificial intelligence servers. (reuters.com) For now, the signal is simple: a cheaper DeepSeek model is pulling more traffic onto Huawei hardware, and China’s biggest platforms do not want to be last in line. (reuters.com)
