DeepSeek V4 to run on Huawei silicon as China builds its own AI stack

DeepSeek's upcoming V4 model will run on Huawei chips rather than US silicon, marking a significant shift in China's AI hardware strategy. DeepSeek has been working directly with Huawei and Cambricon Technologies to rewrite parts of V4's underlying code for Chinese chips. Major Chinese tech companies including Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent have placed bulk orders for Huawei's upcoming chip totalling hundreds of thousands of units. The model is expected to launch within weeks, and DeepSeek is also developing two additional V4 variants optimised for different capabilities, all built on domestic Chinese chips. Notably, DeepSeek broke from industry practice by not sharing the model with US chip makers for performance optimisation.