DeepSeek, the Chinese startup, on Friday previewed a new AI model, the V4, adapted for Huawei chip technology, underlining China’s growing self-sufficiency in the sector. The Pro version of the new model outperforms other open-source models in world-knowledge benchmarks, trailing only Google’s closed-source Gemini-Pro-3.1, DeepSeek said. The close collaboration with Huawei on the V4 contrasts with DeepSeek’s past reliance on Nvidia’s chips. “This is a big deal for China’s AI industry,” said He Hui, director of semiconductor research at consultancy Omdia. “Huawei’s Ascend chips are the country’s best homegrown alternative to Nvidia, and supporting DeepSeek V4 shows that top Chinese AI models can now run on Chinese hardware.” Huawei said its chips were used in some of the V4’s training process. DeepSeek’s pivot underscores concerns raised by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang that the U.S. firm risks losing its developer ecosystem in China due to U.S. export controls and Beijing’s self-sufficiency push. “The day that DeepSeek comes out on Huawei first, that is a horrible outcome for our nation,” Huang said in a Dwarkesh Podcast interview this month. Friday’s launch comes one day after the White House accused China of stealing U.S. AI labs’ intellectual property on an industrial scale. Huawei said it had worked