Chinese Chipmakers and Cloud Providers Embrace DeepSeek

Chinese companies, from chipmakers to cloud service providers, are rushing to support DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence (AI) models, spurring analysts to even hail it a “watershed moment” for the industry. 

Chinese AI chipmakers – including Moore Threads, Tencent-backed Enflame, Baidu’s Kunlunxin and Hygon Information Technology, have declared that their computing clusters and accelerators would be able to support DeepSeek’s R1 and V3 models. 

“We pay tribute to DeepSeek”, Moore Threads headlined their post on WeChat, adding that progress by the firm’s models using domestically made graphic processing units could “set on fire” China’s AI industry. 

On February 01, Huawei Technologies, which also have their own line of AI chips, said they were working with AI infrastructure start-up SiliconFlow to make DeepSeek’s models available to customers on their Ascend cloud service. Their performance was comparable to models run on global, high-end chips, they added. 

“DeepSeek demonstrates that competitive large language models can be deployed on China’s ‘good-enough’ chips, easing reliance on cutting-edge US hardware”, Bernstein analysts said in a note on February 02, citing Ascend and planned chips from Cambricon and Hygon. 

The cloud arms of China’s biggest internet companies – Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent – also said they have made DeepSeek’s models accessible via their services. 

China has welcomed DeepSeek’s success, turning the start-up based in the eastern city of Hangzhou and the firm’s founder Liang Wenfeng (right) into pop culture celebrities. 

In fact, Microsoft and Amazon’s cloud services have also started offering DeepSeek’s models – but already, there are countries such Australia, Italy and the Netherlands which have blocked, or are investigating, DeepSeek’s AI app on concerns of privacy.