According to the official, the Blackwell chips are likely located in a data center in Inner Mongolia. Deepseek is expected to remove technical traces indicating the use of U.S. chips. The official declined to explain how the company obtained the hardware. Nvidia declined to comment, while Deepseek and the U.S. Department of Commerce did not respond to Reuters’ inquiries.

The leak comes amid broader tensions in the AI sector. Complaints from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic about alleged model distillation attacks by Chinese startups, as well as OpenAI’s recent downplaying of a well-known coding benchmark, may signal expectations that Deepseek’s upcoming model will again deliver strong performance at low cost. In January 2025, Deepseek already rattled U.S. tech stocks tied to the AI boom.