DeepSeek Orders at Least 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT Chips for New Inner Mongolia Data Center

DeepSeek is preparing to install at least 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT AI accelerators at a new gigawatt-scale data center in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, Bloomberg reported September 4, citing people familiar with the plans — potentially one of the largest known clusters of Chinese-made AI chips assembled to date. The site, roughly 350km northwest of Beijing, was chosen for cheap wind and solar power and a 4.3°C average temperature that aids natural cooling; the facility is scheduled to partially come online in late 2027 or early 2028. The order underscores DeepSeek's continued pivot toward Huawei's domestic Ascend line for inference and post-training even as it still relies on Nvidia hardware for some training workloads. Fulfillment of the full order could take more than a year given Huawei's high-bandwidth-memory supply constraints on the 950DT, which is due to launch commercially in the fourth quarter of 2026.