Facing US export controls, China’s DeepSeek plans to make its own chips

面对美国出口管制，中国 DeepSeek 计划自研芯片

DeepSeek, the Chinese startup developing large language models that are competitive with those from US companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, is planning to enter the silicon business, according to Reuters. 据路透社报道，正在开发可与 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 等美国公司相媲美的大型语言模型的中国初创公司 DeepSeek，正计划进军芯片领域。

Citing three people familiar with the matter, Reuters writes that DeepSeek has been working on a move into silicon for about a year. It has been meeting with potential partners in the hardware and silicon space and has been hiring engineers for the project. 路透社援引三位知情人士的消息称，DeepSeek 在过去一年左右的时间里一直在筹备进军芯片行业。该公司一直在与硬件和芯片领域的潜在合作伙伴会面，并正在为该项目招聘工程师。

The focus is on data center chips for inference, not training, and the goal is likely to reduce reliance on both Huawei and Nvidia. Nvidia is the chipmaker for most AI companies in North America and Europe, but a United States export ban has prevented the company from achieving a similar presence in China. 其重点是用于推理而非训练的数据中心芯片，目标很可能是减少对华为和英伟达的依赖。英伟达是北美和欧洲大多数人工智能公司的芯片供应商，但美国的出口禁令使其无法在中国市场实现同样的市场占有率。

Huawei controls about half of the data center chip market there, and DeepSeek isn’t the only one trying to enter; Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Baidu have been making moves, too. 华为目前占据了中国数据中心芯片市场约一半的份额，而 DeepSeek 并非唯一试图进入该领域的公司；阿里巴巴和百度等中国科技巨头也一直在采取行动。

While chip export controls in the US are a major reason this is an urgent concern for DeepSeek, US-based AI companies are making similar chip plans. For example, OpenAI and Broadcom jointly announced Jalapeño, the former’s first chip designed for inference at scale, just a couple of weeks ago. 虽然美国的芯片出口管制是 DeepSeek 迫切关注这一问题的主要原因，但美国本土的人工智能公司也在制定类似的芯片计划。例如，OpenAI 和博通（Broadcom）在几周前联合发布了 Jalapeño，这是 OpenAI 首款专为大规模推理设计的芯片。

Anthropic, too, has been exploring custom chip design, though there have not been any publicly visible milestones yet. In OpenAI’s case, it’s partly a play to reduce its reliance on Nvidia, but it’s also a desire to have Apple-like control over the entire tech stack for its products. Anthropic 也一直在探索定制芯片设计，尽管目前尚未有公开的里程碑进展。对于 OpenAI 而言，这在一定程度上是为了减少对英伟达的依赖，同时也是为了像苹果公司那样，对其产品的整个技术栈拥有掌控权。

Further, getting in at the silicon and data center levels can be an advantage in a market where data center access is likely to remain constrained, with multiple companies competing for compute as they scale up their AI models and services. 此外，在数据中心资源可能持续受限的市场环境下，深入芯片和数据中心层面可以带来竞争优势，因为各家公司都在竞相争夺算力，以扩展其人工智能模型和服务。