Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s latest AI model, set to be released as soon as next week, was trained on Nvidia’s most advanced AI chip, the Blackwell, reports Reuters, citing a senior Trump administration official. Were this to be the case, it could represent a violation of US export controls.
The official said the US believed DeepSeek would remove the technical indicators that might reveal its use of American AI chips. The official declined to say how the US government obtained the information. The official did not provide information on how DeepSeek obtained the Blackwells but noted that US policy is “we’re not shipping Blackwells to China,” emphasizing that DeepSeek’s possession of the chips could represent an export control violation.
They also said DeepSeek’s Blackwells are likely part of a cluster at its data center in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China. The model they helped train likely relied on the “distillation” of models made by leading-edge US AI companies, including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI, echoing allegations made by OpenAI and Anthropic, the official added.