DeepSeek is still working with Huawei to make the model compatible with Ascend for inference, the people said.
Founder Liang Wenfeng has said internally he is dissatisfied with R2’s progress and has been pushing to spend more time to build an advanced model that can sustain the company’s lead in the AI field, they said.
The R2 launch was also delayed because of longer-than-expected data labeling for its updated model, another person added. Chinese media reports have suggested that the model may be released as soon as in the coming weeks.
“Models are commodities that can be easily swapped out,” said Ritwik Gupta, an AI researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. “A lot of developers are using Alibaba’s Qwen3, which is powerful and flexible.”
Gupta noted that Qwen3 adopted DeepSeek’s core concepts, such as its training algorithm that makes the model capable of reasoning, but made them more efficient to use.
Gupta, who tracks Huawei’s AI ecosystem, said the company is facing “growing pains” in using Ascend for training, though he expects the Chinese national champion to adapt eventually.
“Just because we’re not seeing leading models trained on Huawei today doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. It’s a matter of time,” he said.
Nvidia, a chipmaker at the center of a geopolitical battle between Beijing and Washington, recently agreed to give the US government a cut of its revenues in China in order to resume sales of its H20 chips to the country.
“Developers will play a crucial role in building the winning AI ecosystem,” said Nvidia about Chinese companies using its chips. “Surrendering entire markets and developers would only hurt American economic and national security.”
DeepSeek and Huawei did not respond to a request for comment.
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