Tech war: which Chinese firm is supplying next-generation AI chips to DeepSeek?

Speculation is swirling across the semiconductor industry after artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek recently suggested that China’s next-generation AI chips will soon be released.

The Hangzhou-based start-up’s cryptic one-line post on WeChat triggered online discussions about which AI chip supplier, or suppliers, would unveil this breakthrough, even as US tech restrictions remain in place.

They include Huawei Technologies, Cambricon Technologies, Moore Threads, Hygon Information Technology and MetaX Integrated Circuits.

DeepSeek’s post on Thursday said the “UE8M0 FP8 scale” of its V3.1 AI model was particularly designed “for home-grown chips to be released soon”. Apart from not identifying the supplier, the firm did not specify how the new AI chips would be used – for training of models or inferencing, the stage where an AI system puts its learning into action.

“It’s also likely that the new model will support a number of AI chips, not just those from Huawei or another company,” Liu Jie, an engineer at a Shanghai-based developer of graphics processing units (GPUs), said on Friday.