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Huawei, DeepSeek strengthen China’s AI self-reliance with collaboration on V4 model

Huawei Technologies’ newest Ascend 950PR and 950DT chips enjoyed “day zero” adaptation to DeepSeek’s latest V4 model, the Shenzhen-based tech giant said in a livestream…

By Samantha Johnson / April 24, 2026
Huawei Technologies’ newest Ascend 950PR and 950DT chips enjoyed “day zero” adaptation to DeepSeek’s latest V4 model, the Shenzhen-based tech giant said in a livestream on Friday, just hours after the model’s release.

The hardware-software collaboration between the two Chinese firms underscores the progress China has made in tech self-reliance, a top national priority for Beijing amid US efforts to block its access to advanced semiconductor chips and chipmaking equipment.

During the livestream hosted on Bilibili and WeChat, Huawei engineers outlined the adaptation of its chips and flagship software system Compute Architecture for Neural Networks (CANN) – its equivalent to Nvidia’s dominant CUDA software – with DeepSeek’s latest model.

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The company said its entire Ascend SuperNode product line was “fully adapted” to DeepSeek V4 for model inference, which had “significantly improved” due to the two companies’ close collaboration before the model’s release.

Inference refers to the serving and running of an AI model. While cutting-edge Chinese models are still reliant on advanced US chips for training, computational demand for inference was set to surpass training demand globally by 2030, according to McKinsey & Company.

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Huawei’s next-generation Ascend 950PR and 950DT chips are expected to be available by the end of the year. In its announcement on Friday, DeepSeek said its V4 model would have throughput issues until the second half of the year, which was when Huawei’s Ascend 950PR supernodes would “ship at scale”.

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