DeepSeek partners with Huawei to develop chip programming tools, reducing reliance on Nvidia

Chinese AI firm DeepSeek said on Wednesday it has partnered with Huawei Technologies to develop programming tools for Huawei's Ascend chips, the latest sign of Chinese tech firms deepening ties as they seek alternatives to the Nvidia ecosystem.

In a post on its official WeChat account, DeepSeek said it was open-sourcing infrastructure for Huawei's Ascend platform, including a high-level programming language called TileLang, along with related compute and communication libraries.

"To build a new generation of independent, self-controlled GPU software ecosystem, the first priority is establishing a high-level language that is universal, easy to program, and still capable of reaching the hardware's full performance potential," DeepSeek said.

"TileLang was created precisely to meet this need," the company said, adding that it offers "a simpler programming model" than Nvidia's CUDA, improving development efficiency and simplifying code logic.