Exclusive: Nvidia helped DeepSeek hone AI models later used by China’s military, lawmaker says

vm_admin
Exclusive: Nvidia helped DeepSeek hone AI models later used by China’s military, lawmaker says

By Stephen Nellis
Publication Date: 2026-01-29 00:16:00

  • DeepSeek’s AI models rival US offerings with less computing power
  • Letter says Nvidia provided technical assistance to DeepSeek, boosting training efficiency
  • US concerns over Nvidia chips aiding China’s military despite restrictions
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 28 (Reuters) – U.S. chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab helped China’s DeepSeek hone artificial intelligence models that were later used by the Chinese military, the chairman of a U.S. House of Representatives committee said in a letter seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

DeepSeek shook markets early last year with a set of AI models that rivaled some of the best offerings from the United States but were developed with far less computing power, fuelling concerns in Washington that China could catch up with the U.S. in AI despite U.S. restrictions on the sale of high-powered computing chips to China.

Sign up here.

In a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Representative John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on China, said documents obtained by the committee from Nvidia showed the achievement came after extensive technical assistance from Nvidia.

“According to NVIDIA records, NVIDIA technology development personnel helped DeepSeek achieve major training efficiency gains through an ‘optimized co-design of algorithms, frameworks, and hardware,’ with internal reporting boasting that ‘DeepSeek-V3 requires only 2.788M H800 GPU hours for its full training’ – less than what U.S. developers…

Related Posts