China’s DeepSeek is using banned Blackwell chips to train its newest AI model, The Information reports
DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup whose chatbot built on the cheap turned the US tech world upside down in early 2025, is using “several thousand” of Nvidia’s top Blackwell chips to build its next model, per The Information.
The outlet cites six people with knowledge on the scheme, where the advanced chips, which are not allowed to be sold to China, make their way into the world’s second-largest economy piecemeal after servers are disassembled.
Nvidia told Bloomberg, “While such smuggling seems farfetched, we pursue any tip we receive.”
The Trump administration recently gave the go-ahead for Nvidia to send the H200, the best chips from its Hopper generation, to China. Though the US president teased discussing the possibility of permitting Blackwell sales ahead of his meeting with President Xi at the end of October, that item was not on the agenda.
DeepSeek said that its V3 model — the one that captured global attention earlier this year — was trained using Nvidia’s H800 GPUs, but some observers in the AI industry argued that the startup likely had access to more advanced compute. The White House and the FBI reportedly investigated this amid signs of chip smuggling.
Earlier this year, Singapore charged a group of men with fraud for allegedly routing servers containing Nvidia chips to Malaysia (with their ultimate destination unknown, but presumed to be China).
