New Delhi: DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence lab that shook global tech markets with its low cost model last year, is again making headlines.
This time, the company has chosen not to share its upcoming flagship AI model with leading U.S. chipmakers ahead of launch, according to a Reuters report .
The decision marks a break from common industry practice. AI developers usually provide early access of major model updates to hardware partners like Nvidia and AMD so that performance can be optimised before public release. DeepSeek appears to have taken a different path for its next model, known as V4.
Nvidia and AMD left out of early access
As per Reuters , DeepSeek did not provide pre release access of its V4 model to Nvidia and AMD. Instead, it granted early access to domestic suppliers, including Huawei Technologies. Chinese chipmakers reportedly received a head start of several weeks to optimise the software for their processors.
This is notable. DeepSeek has previously worked closely with Nvidia’s technical staff. So the shift has raised eyebrows in the AI and semiconductor industry.
Reuters could not immediately determine the reason behind the move . But some analysts see broader signals.
Ben Bajarin, CEO of Creative Strategies, told Reuters, “The impact to Nvidia and AMD for general data accelerators is minimal – most enterprises are not running DeepSeek, which serves as a benchmarking model more than anything else.” He added that new AI coding tools are cutting optimisation time “from months to weeks.”
He further said the move is likely part of a broader strategy by the Chinese government “to try to keep U.S. hardware and models disadvantaged” in China .
Export controls and chip questions
The development comes amid rising tensions over AI chip exports. A senior Trump administration official told Reuters that DeepSeek’s latest model was trained on Nvidia’s advanced Blackwell chips using a cluster in mainland China, which appears to violate U.S. export controls .
The same official said DeepSeek may try to remove technical indicators that show use of American AI chips and publicly claim that Huawei chips were used instead .
DeepSeek’s rise has been rapid. Its models have crossed 75 million downloads on Hugging Face since January 2025 . Chinese open source models have now surpassed those from any other country on the platform in the past year.
