DeepSeek reportedly plans to pre-train its V5 model on at least 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950 chips
Reports say the chips will sit in a new data centre in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, with pre-training starting as soon as late 2026 and Huawei engineers embedded with DeepSeek's team; neither company has confirmed.
Why it matters
If it holds, V5 would be the first frontier-scale Chinese model pre-trained on domestic accelerators rather than Nvidia hardware, a direct test of whether export controls can slow China's leading labs. DeepSeek reportedly struggled to train on earlier Ascend generations because of stability and performance problems, and founder Liang Wenfeng has said four Ascend 950 chips are needed to match one Nvidia GB300. Huawei targets commercial release of the chip in the fourth quarter of 2026, leaving little room for delay. Watch for confirmation from either company and for the Ulanqab site coming online.
Key facts
- At least 160,000 Ascend 950DT chips planned, per reports
- Site: new data centre in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia
- Pre-training could start as soon as late 2026
- Ascend 950DT: 144 GB memory, about 4 TB/s bandwidth
- Liang Wenfeng: four Ascend 950s match one Nvidia GB300
- Neither DeepSeek nor Huawei has confirmed