DeepSeek Develops Custom AI Inference Chip to Reduce Reliance on Nvidia and Huawei

Exam-focused facts from the 9 July 2026 current affairs briefing.

Key facts

DeepSeek is developing its own AI inference chip to reduce reliance on Nvidia and Huawei.
The chip is designed for AI inference, which is the stage where a trained AI model answers user questions, rather than for training new models.
Huawei currently controls approximately half of China's $50 billion AI chip market, supplying Ascend chips to leading Chinese AI companies.
Other AI developers creating custom chips include OpenAI (which introduced the Jalapeno chip with Broadcom), Alphabet (Tensor Processing Units - TPUs), Amazon, and Anthropic.
DeepSeek has raised more than $7.4 billion in its first fundraising round, valuing the company at over $50 billion.