Demand for Huawei Ascend 950 chips has surged following the launch of DeepSeek V4, which runs on the Shenzhen-based company's hardware, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Major Chinese internet firms, including ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba, are now approaching Huawei to place new chip orders, the sources added.
Companies specializing in cloud computing and graphics processing unit (GPU) rental services are also scrambling to place orders, two of the sources added, without providing the names of the firms.
The 950PR outperforms Nvidia H20 but still lags behind the more advanced Nvidia H200, whose shipments to China remain stalled amid U.S.-China regulatory disputes—creating an opening for Huawei.
The chip marks a breakthrough for Huawei after years of limited traction, with successful testing prompting firms like ByteDance and Alibaba to plan orders.
Deepseek Frenzy
The scramble for Huawei's chips underscores how DeepSeek's V4 release last week has turbocharged demand for domestic Chinese AI hardware as U.S. export controls continue to restrict access to Nvidia's most advanced processors. It is also an endorsement of the performance of Huawei's chips so far.
DeepSeek's move to optimize its V4 model for Huawei chips signals a shift away from U.S. semiconductors toward domestic AI hardware, aligning with Beijing's tech ambitions.
Huawei said its Ascend 950-based infrastructure fully supports V4, while the 950PR stands out as the only Chinese chip enabling more efficient, lower-cost AI computations.
Major platforms like Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud rolled out V4 services immediately, expanding access and sharply boosting demand for AI processing chips.
Supply Constraints Persist
DeepSeek, which is offering developers a 75% discount on its new model until May 5, said V4-Pro pricing could decline significantly in the second half of 2026 once Huawei's Ascend 950 supernodes 'ship at scale.'
However, the company acknowledged that constraints would persist until production ramps up, reflecting the tight supply of high-end homemade AI chips.
DeepSeek V4 comes in two versions, V4-Pro with 1.6 trillion parameters and V4-Flash with 284 billion, both offering a one-million-token context window and released under the permissive MIT open-source licence, allowing free use, modification, and commercialisation.
However, supply of Ascend 950PR is expected to lag demand due to U.S. export curbs on advanced chipmaking equipment, limiting China's access to cutting-edge manufacturing tools.
Huawei aims to ship around 750,000 units of the 950PR this year, with mass production starting in April and full-scale deliveries planned for the second half of 2026, according to sources familiar with the plans.
(With inputs from Reuters)