TechFlow news, July 7. According to Reuters, three sources revealed that Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is developing its own AI chips. The chip is designed specifically for inference scenarios, not for model training. The project was launched about a year ago and is still in the early stages. The company has contacted chip design, wafer foundry, and storage enterprises, and is quietly recruiting more chip design engineers without publicly posting job listings.
If successful, DeepSeek will reduce its reliance on NVIDIA and Huawei Ascend chips, following the trend of global AI giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic developing their own hardware. Affected by U.S. export controls, DeepSeek previously shifted from NVIDIA H800 to Huawei chips, and this self-developed chip initiative is seen as a major strategic transformation. Meanwhile, DeepSeek also plans to complete its first round of external financing, with a fundraising scale of about $7 billion and a valuation reaching $52 billion to $59 billion.
