Possibility Raised That U.S. Export Controls Were Circumvented
Chinese AI startup 'DeepSeek' is reported to have developed high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) models using only low-cost graphics processing units (GPUs), but some in the U.S. tech industry have expressed skepticism about these claims. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, also appeared to agree with speculation that DeepSeek might possess a large number of the latest GPUs.
On the 27th (local time), Musk shared a post on his social media platform X stating that DeepSeek holds a large quantity of Nvidia H100 GPUs. The H100 is Nvidia's latest generation data center GPU as of now.
The post Musk shared quoted a recent interview with Alexander Wang, CEO and founder of AI data company Scale AI. The poster cited Wang's remarks, saying, "DeepSeek likely owns about 50,000 H100 GPUs," and added, "Due to U.S. export controls, this fact could not be disclosed."
Musk commented on the post with the word "Obviously," indicating his agreement with the suspicion.
Previously, DeepSeek stated in a technical report published alongside the model release that it used a cluster composed of 2,048 Nvidia H800 GPUs to train the AI model. The H800 is a low-cost GPU with performance limited to comply with export controls and is much cheaper than the H100.
Since leading U.S. AI companies have trained models using tens of thousands of the latest GPUs, DeepSeek's announcement has caused a huge impact not only in the tech industry but also in the stock market.
Interview content of Alexander Wang, CEO of Scale AI, estimating the actual GPU holdings of DeepSeek. X Capture
However, some have raised suspicions that DeepSeek may actually possess far more GPUs. Gavin Baker, Chief Investment Officer of Artrad Management, who also shared Wang's interview on X like Musk, called it "an interesting analysis and the best I've seen so far," and pointed out, "Although the technical document states an expenditure of $6 million (about 860 million KRW), this does not include prior research and experimentation costs related to architecture, algorithms, and data."
He added, "This implies that hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent on previous research in the lab, and they may have accessed a much larger GPU cluster to train the model," asserting, "DeepSeek definitely has more than just the H800."
He also noted, "About 20% of Nvidia's revenue comes from Singapore," and remarked, "Not all of Nvidia's total GPU sales would go to Singapore," suggesting the possibility that some Chinese companies might have circumvented U.S. export regulations to purchase GPUs.
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