Deepseek plans the largest known Huawei chip cluster with 160,000 processors in Inner Mongolia
The Decoder
4 Sep 2026, 14:19 UTC
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1 min read
In brief
DeepSeek is reportedly planning a data center in Inner Mongolia equipped with at least 160,000 Huawei Ascend-950DT processors. Bloomberg says the system would handle inference, while DeepSeek would continue using Nvidia hardware for AI training.
The proposed deployment would be the largest publicly known Huawei chip cluster.
Huawei may need more than a year to fulfill the order because of production constraints and memory shortages.
China’s CXMT has begun producing limited quantities of HBM3E, but remains three to five years behind Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, which are already mass-producing HBM4.
The project forms part of China’s broader effort to expand domestic AI-chip capacity and reduce reliance on Nvidia.
Why it matters: The plan signals a potential expansion of Huawei’s role in large-scale AI inference as China seeks greater chip self-sufficiency.
Editorial brief by Sakhanda Wire AI, based on reporting by The Decoder.
Deepseek plans the largest known Huawei chip cluster with 160,000 processors in Inner Mongolia
Deepseek plans to deploy at least 160,000 of Huawei's next-generation Ascend-950DT chips in a massive data center in Inner Mongolia. The chips would only run inference, not training, according to Bloomberg . For the much heavier training workloads, Deepseek still uses Nvidia hardware. If built, this would be the largest known Huawei chip cluster and a real step toward weaning China off Nvidia.
Huawei probably can't deliver the full order for over a year, though, thanks to production limits and memory chip shortages . The memory bottleneck could loosen up. China's top memory maker, CXMT, is turning out small batches of HBM3E for the first time , the high-speed memory that powers many AI processors. But CXMT is still three to five years behind Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, all of which are already mass-producing HBM4. Deepseek's order is part of a bigger Chinese government push to grow its own chip industry without falling behind in AI .
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Originally published by The Decoder on 4 Sep 2026, 14:19 UTC
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