China’s DeepSeek’s new model, called V4, will run on the latest chips designed by Huawei Technologies, The Information reported on Friday (paywall).

In preparation for V4’s launch, Chinese tech giants, including Alibaba Group, ByteDance and Tencent Holdings, have placed bulk orders for Huawei’s upcoming chip totalling hundreds of thousands of units, the report said, citing five people with direct knowledge of the purchase.

The next-generation model will likely be launched in the next few weeks, the report said. Huawei and DeepSeek did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside normal office hours.

DeepSeek has spent the past few months working directly with Huawei and another Chinese chip designer, Cambricon Technologies, to help rewrite pieces of the model’s underlying code, and in testing, the report said, citing two people close to the company.

DeepSeek is also working on two additional V4 variants, each optimised for different capabilities and built to run on Chinese chips, the report said.

Reuters had earlier this year reported that DeepSeek has not shown US chip makers its upcoming flagship model for performance optimisation, breaking from standard industry practice ahead of a major model update.

Early access

The lab instead granted early access to domestic suppliers, including Huawei.

The release of DeepSeek’s low-cost models V3 and R1 triggered a global tech stock selloff last year, causing investors to question whether US AI firms needed to spend billions of dollars on AI computing power.