One of China’s best-known AI labs is preparing a data center in Inner Mongolia that would run almost entirely on Huawei processors, with an order of more than 160,000 accelerators reportedly in the works.
Bloomberg first reported the plan on September 4. Huawei Central and other outlets that picked up the story identified the part as the next-generation Ascend 950DT and said DeepSeek intends the facility to run on domestic silicon rather than Nvidia gear.
Supply is the open question. Huawei’s 950DT output for this year is seen reaching only the low hundreds of thousands of units, and those wafers must be shared with other customers, so an order at this scale could take far longer than a single year to fill.
The startup is separately working to raise money for the project. Its training workloads today still depend heavily on Nvidia hardware, and a fleet of Ascend parts would not change that overnight, but shifting inference to homegrown chips would shrink the exposure over time.
Beijing has been urging AI developers to favor local processors as US export controls tighten, and DeepSeek is one of the largest model builders still deciding how quickly to unwind its Nvidia reliance. A commitment of this size would be among the strongest endorsements yet of Huawei’s Ascend line since the sanctions took hold.
