Skepticism over chips
DeepSeek's reveal of R1 has already led to heated public debate over the veracity of its claim — not least because its models were built despite export controls from the U.S. restricting the use of advanced AI chips to China.
DeepSeek claims it had its breakthrough using mature Nvidia clips, including H800 and A100 chips, which are less advanced than the chipmaker's cutting-edge H100s, which can't be exported to China.
However, in comments to CNBC last week, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, said he believed DeepSeek used the banned chips — a claim that DeepSeek denies.