According to multiple overseas media reports on September 14, AI model unicorn DeepSeek is planning an unprecedented procurement order—at least 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT AI accelerators—for a new data center in Inner Mongolia.
Amid tightening US export controls and blocked Nvidia high-end chip supply to China, the order's strategic meaning far exceeds commerce: it signals China's top AI firms are switching core compute infrastructure from "US-dependent" to "domestic substitution" at scale.
Notably, the 950DT chips target inference rather than training—reflecting a structural shift where inference compute demand is ballooning faster than training. Huawei's initial-year capacity is limited to the "low hundreds of thousands," so DeepSeek alone may absorb nearly all early output.
The deal, alongside Cambricon's Day-0 model adaptation, points to a maturing closed loop in China's domestic AI chip and large-model industry as supply-chain tension itself signals market maturity.
Source: NetEase Tech
