With the launch of DeepSeek’s latest LLM, the company embraces the Chinese CUDA alternative CANN from day one. This rapidly creates a new challenger from China to Nvidia’s dominance, although the company doesn’t need to worry just yet.
Chinese AI specialist DeepSeek has launched a new LLM: DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp. Earlier this year, DeepSeek made headlines by introducing an AI model that could compete with the largest LLMs of the moment, but
The latest version stands out due to its support for CANN. This is an alternative to the Nvidia CUDA ecosystem. CUDA is the most mature AI ecosystem on the planet. Through CUDA, Nvidia ensures its dominance in the AI market. Even when competitors like AMD release hardware that can match Nvidia accelerators, developers continue to prefer Nvidia and CUDA.
Moving away from Nvidia
In China, however, Nvidia has fallen out of favor. On one hand, there are the embargo rules of President Trump’s administration, which only allow the export of throttled accelerators. On the other hand, there’s China itself, which has taken matters into its own hands and has restricted the purchase of Nvidia AI chips.
However, China also recognizes the strategic importance of AI development. With government support, Chinese tech specialists are heavily investing in developing their own AI ecosystem. Although CUDA doesn’t need to fear for its position just yet, the trade war has accelerated the development of an Eastern alternative.
The fact that the new DeepSeek model is immediately CANN-optimized means that it can run smoothly on homemade Chinese accelerators that are part of the ecosystem. This includes hardware from Huawei, among others. In just a few months, a well-oiled tandem of AI hardware and software developers has emerged in China.
From CUDA to CANN?
CANN is currently a Chinese story, and CUDA remains the global standard. The question is, however, to what extent this will remain so in the medium term. While the US is putting pressure on its own trade relations with the rest of the world, China is preparing to introduce an alternative to American technology through domestic development.
When Chinese technology reaches parity with American technology, no one will be surprised if it’s also marketed outside of China. It’s only a matter of time before cheaper Chinese accelerators with a matured CANN ecosystem will be viewed with interest beyond China’s borders. It’s still notable that Europe plays no significant role in this story, except as a potential market.