FirstFT: DeepSeek delays model release amid Huawei chips setback
Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek delayed the release of its new model after persistent technical issues with Huawei’s chips, underlining the challenges for Beijing as it tries to wean itself off US technology.
Authorities encouraged DeepSeek to adopt Huawei’s Ascend processor over Nvidia’s systems, but the company could not conduct a successful training run with the Chinese chip, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times. This prompted the company to use Nvidia chips for training and Huawei’s for inference, said the people.
Why it matters: This week, Beijing ordered its tech giants to justify their orders of Nvidia chips on national security concerns. But industry insiders have said that China-made chips suffer from stability issues, slower inter-chip connectivity and inferior software compared with Nvidia’s products, which could cause Chinese companies to lose ground in the artificial intelligence race. The art of persuasion: Research shows top AI chatbots can make people change their political views after less than 10 minutes of conversation.