The United States Department of Commerce has initiated an investigation into whether DeepSeek is utilizing chips designated by the US government as prohibited for export to China in developing AI models. This directive has been in effect since 2023, with NVIDIA being the company most heavily impacted, as both the A100, A800, H100, and H800 chips are involved.
Reports indicate that these AI chips have been surreptitiously imported into China through various intermediary countries. Prior to this, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, provided information that the AI chips used by DeepSeek for AI model development consist of a mix of regular chips not banned, banned chips purchased before the directive, and chips that were illicitly brought in.
The US Department of Commerce and DeepSeek have yet to comment on these reports, while NVIDIA has stated that the company has numerous customers in the countries specified, who continue to receive the company’s products in the United States and Western markets.
Source: Reuters
TLDR: The US government is investigating if DeepSeek is using banned chips to develop AI models for export to China, impacting NVIDIA and raising concerns about illegal chip imports.
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