U.S. says DeepSeek trained model on banned Nvidia chips

U.S. officials believe a forthcoming artificial intelligence model from Chinese startup DeepSeek was trained using Nvidia’s most advanced AI chip. This raises concerns that it may have violated American export controls.

A senior Trump administration official said on Monday that the model, which could be released as soon as next week, was trained on Nvidia’s Blackwell chips. Shipments of Blackwell processors to China are currently prohibited under U.S. export rules.

The official said the United States believes DeepSeek may remove technical indicators that could reveal the use of American-made chips. The chips are thought to be clustered at a DeepSeek data centre in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China.

The person declined to explain how the U.S. government obtained the information or how DeepSeek may have acquired the chips. However, the official stressed that U.S. policy is clear that Blackwell chips are not authorised for export to China.

Nvidia declined to comment. The U.S. Commerce Department and DeepSeek did not respond to requests for comment.

China’s embassy in Washington criticised the report, saying Beijing opposes what it described as the politicisation of economic and technological issues and the expansive use of export controls. At a regular briefing on Tuesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said officials were not aware of the specific circumstances but reiterated China’s longstanding objections to U.S. chip restrictions.

Confirmation by the U.S. government, first reported by Reuters, is likely to intensify debate in Washington over how strictly to limit Chinese access to advanced AI hardware. Some policymakers argue that allowing chip sales could slow China’s domestic competitors, while others warn the technology could be diverted for military use.

U.S. export controls overseen by the Commerce Department currently bar shipments of Blackwell chips to China. Although President Donald Trump earlier signalled openness to selling scaled-down versions, he later said the most advanced processors should be kept for U.S. companies. His decision late last year to allow limited sales of Nvidia’s H200 chips to Chinese firms also drew criticism, and those shipments remain stalled.

The U.S. official also said DeepSeek’s model likely relied on “distillation” techniques using outputs from leading U.S. AI systems, including those developed by OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI.