A familiar with the matter said the U.S. Department of Commerce is studying whether DeepSeek (the performance of the AI model shocked the technology community) is using U.S. chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China.
Last week, China’s DeepSeek launched a free assistant that said it uses a small portion of the cost of the U.S. model. Within a few days it became the most downloaded app for Apple’s App Store and raised concerns about the U.S. leadership in AI, which triggered a rough of about $1 trillion (about Rs 86,63,626 crore) .
Current restrictions on NVIDIA Artificial Intelligence (AI) processors are designed to prevent its most complex chips from reaching China.
The organized smuggling of AI chips to China has been tracked to countries including Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, sources said.
The Ministry of Commerce and DeepSeek did not immediately return requests for comment.
A NVIDIA spokesman said many of its customers have business entities in Singapore and use them for products representing the United States and the West.
“We insist that our partners comply with all applicable laws and if we receive any information to the contrary, please take appropriate action.”
DeepSeek said it uses NVIDIA’s H800 chip, which could have been legally purchased in 2023. Reuters cannot determine whether DeepSeek uses other controlled chips, whether these chips are not allowed to be shipped to China.
DeepSeek obviously also has the NVIDIA not too powerful H20, which can still be shipped to China legally. The United States is considering controlling them under the leadership of the Biden administration and newly appointed Trump officials.
“It seems that a large part of DeepSeek’s AI chip fleet is made up of chips that have not been banned yet (but should be) but are transported before being banned. And some seem likely to be smuggled.”
The United States has set up a series of restrictions unless AI chips are exported to China and plans to limit its shipments to many other countries.
©Tech Word News
(This story has not been edited by Tech Word News’s staff and is automatically generated from the joint feed.)
