DeepSeek Plans 160,000 Huawei Ascend Chips for 1GW Ulanqab Site

DeepSeek plans to deploy at least 160,000 of Huawei's top AI accelerators at a data center it is building in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, Bloomberg reported. If it lands as described, it would be 'one of the largest known clusters of Huawei AI chips' anywhere.

The Hangzhou startup is targeting roughly 1 GW of computing capacity at the Ulanqab site, some in company-owned infrastructure and some leased from other operators, according to the report. It wants at least part of the capacity 'operating by the end of 2027 or early 2028.' The silicon in question is Huawei's next-generation Ascend 950DT, which Bloomberg says DeepSeek intends to use for 'operating its models, though the timeline for installation will depend on Huawei's production capabilities.'

The unusual choice is what the 950DT is being reserved for. 'The startup doesn't currently plan to use the 950DT chips for training,' Bloomberg writes, 'even though Huawei designed and marketed these processors to serve that more demanding function.' Inference, not training, is the workload DeepSeek wants hosted domestically at this scale.

Ulanqab already hosts Alibaba, VNET Group and Kuaishou, and more than 90% of the area's computing capacity is dedicated to AI, Yahoo Finance's writeup of the same reporting notes. Neither Bloomberg nor the follow-on coverage names a dollar figure, a financing structure or the power-procurement partner. It is our latest entry in a long run of China AI stories documenting how quickly the domestic accelerator stack is being wired into production, more than 340 of them in the last 90 days alone.