Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek delayed the release of its new model after failing to train it using Huawei’s chips, highlighting the limits of Beijing’s push to replace US technology. DeepSeek was encouraged by authorities to adopt Huawei’s Ascend processor rather than use Nvidia’s systems after releasing its R1 model in January, according to three people familiar with the matter. But the Chinese start-up encountered persistent technical issues during its R2 training process using Ascend chips, prompting it to use Nvidia chips for training and Huawei’s for inference, said the people. The issues were the main reason the model’s launch was delayed from May, said a person with knowledge of the situation, causing it to lose ground to rivals. Training involves the model learning from a large dataset, while inference refers to the step of using a trained model to make predictions or generate a response, such as a chatbot query. DeepSeek’s difficulties show how Chinese chips still lag behind their US rivals for critical tasks, highlighting the challenges facing China’s drive to be technologically self-sufficient. The Financial Times this week reported that Beijing has demanded that Chinese tech companies justify their orders of Nvidia’s H20, in a move to encourage them to promote alternatives made by Huawei and Cambricon.

Full report : DeepSeek R2’s launch delay is due to training issues on Huawei Ascend chips, prompting a switch to Nvidia chips for training and Huawei’s for inference.