DeepSeek V4 Picks Huawei Chips Over Nvidia, Jensen Huang Responds

When the familiar logo lit up on my phone screen, I realized this time was different. DeepSeek V4 preview launched on April 24, nearly five months after the V3.2 update. But what made people hold their breath wasn't the model's capabilities—it was the platform it landed on first: Huawei's Ascend chips.

This choice broke industry convention. Standard practice has always been giving NVIDIA and AMD early access weeks before launch for adaptation work, given they control 95% of China's large model training market. DeepSeek flipped the script, granting Huawei early adaptation rights while leaving NVIDIA and AMD waiting.

The technical details matter here. DeepSeek V4's deep integration with UE8M0 FP8 Scale precision is their own standard, completely different from NVIDIA's E4M3/E5M2 approach. No decimal representation sounds crude, but it delivers lower power consumption, faster computation, and reduced chip requirements. The dev team's words were telling: "Huawei's side really went all-in—if they pull this off, it's legacy-defining." That kind of determination comes through clearly.

Jensen Huang's reaction speaks volumes. The NVIDIA CEO publicly warned that DeepSeek's new model launching first on Huawei's platform would be a "catastrophic outcome" for the U.S. tech ecosystem. His concern has merit—China has abundant energy, a complete chip supply chain, and massive AI research talent, with 7nm mature process nodes meeting most AI deployment needs. When technical routes no longer depend on cutting-edge process nodes, the rules change.

Zhipu's GLM-5 has completed adaptation for seven mainstream domestic chips and runs stably on pure domestic computing clusters. These signals together show China's AI ecosystem taking shape. It's not about complete replacement—it's about having a viable alternative path. As DeepSeek's website states: "Not swayed by praise, not deterred by criticism, following the path with integrity." Seeing this unfold, you sense something is quietly shifting.