DeepSeek plans to deploy at least 160,000 Huawei chips in Inner Mongolia. This would be the largest known Huawei cluster, but only for inference.
Huawei likely can't deliver for over a year.
CXMT's HBM3E output is small and behind rivals.
What happened
DeepSeek plans to deploy at least 160,000 of Huawei's next-generation Ascend-950DT chips in a data center in Inner Mongolia. The chips would run only inference, not training.
Why it matters
This would be the largest known Huawei chip cluster and a real step toward weaning China off Nvidia. Training workloads still use Nvidia hardware, and Huawei may not deliver the full order for over a year due to production limits and memory chip shortages.
What to watch
China's top memory maker CXMT is producing small batches of HBM3E for the first time, but remains three to five years behind Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, which are mass-producing HBM4.
Ask the AI about this article →
DeepSeek's plan to build a massive Huawei-powered data center in Inner Mongolia marks a notable shift in China's AI hardware strategy. While DeepSeek still relies on Nvidia for training, using Huawei chips for inference would reduce dependence on US technology. The scale is unprecedented, making it the largest known Huawei cluster. However, Huawei's production constraints and memory shortages could delay the project. China's memory maker CXMT is ramping up HBM3E production, but it lags behind established players by several years, potentially limiting the speed of this transition.
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