Overview
- ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba are seeking new orders for Huawei’s Ascend 950 chips after DeepSeek released its V4 model, according to Reuters sources.
- Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud rolled out access to V4 at launch, expanding use of the model and driving more demand for the underlying compute.
- Huawei said its Ascend supernodes fully support V4, and noted the 950PR tops Nvidia’s H20 but trails the more advanced H200, which has not shipped to China due to regulatory friction.
- Huawei planned about 750,000 Ascend 950PR units this year with mass production starting in April and broader shipments in the second half, though output is expected to lag demand under U.S. tool export curbs.
- Benchmark firms and experts say V4 narrows the gap with top U.S. models yet still falls short, with reports pointing to ongoing reliance on U.S. chips and software ecosystems.