Chinese startup DeepSeek is developing its own AI chip, according to three people familiar with the matter, a push that could reduce its reliance on Nvidia and Huawei chips. The chip is designed for inference, the stage of AI computing in which a trained model generates responses for users.
Background
DeepSeek rose to global fame more than a year ago after releasing two highly efficient AI models that went viral worldwide, surprising many in Silicon Valley and Washington. The company has long been known for emphasizing AI model breakthroughs rather than commercializing its technology.
However, Huawei’s offerings still lag Nvidia’s most advanced chips by a wide margin, and a U.S. ban on their exports to China has helped Huawei gain around half of the $50 billion domestic AI chip market, supplying DeepSeek and several other leading industry players.
Global Trends
With an in-house chip, DeepSeek would be joining other global AI developers in seeking greater control over the hardware behind their models and reduced dependence on Nvidia’s. OpenAI last month unveiled Jalapeno, its first custom inference chip, developed with Broadcom, while Anthropic has been weighing building its own AI chips.
Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
