DeepSeek, one of China’s leading AI startups, is developing its own artificial intelligence chip to reduce reliance on US firms, according to reports.The ChatGPT rival is designing the chip for inference – the stage of AI computing in which ⁠a trained model generates responses for users – rather than for training new models, Reuters reported.The in-house chip would give DeepSeek greater control over the hardware that powers its models, making it immune to any export controls on critical hardware built by US firms like Nvidia.The company joins other global AI developers in seeking hardware independence, with ChatGPT creator OpenAI unveiling its own custom chip last month.DeepSeek rose to global fame more than ​a ⁠year ago after releasing two highly efficient AI models that went viral worldwide, surprising many in Silicon Valley and Washington.The company has long been known for emphasizing AI model breakthroughs rather than commercializing its technology. Despite becoming a standard-bearer of China's AI ambitions, DeepSeek has kept a low profile.A man takes photos of a DeepSeek display at a shopping mall in Hangzhou, in China's eastern Zhejiang province on 23 April, 2026 (AFP/Getty)A DeepSeek inference chip would target the fastest-growing segment of ⁠AI computing demand. As AI applications spread, more of the industry's computing work is shifting from training models to running them, which relies on ⁠specialised chips that can be cheaper and less power-hungry than general-purpose GPUs.However, there is no guarantee of success. Designing a competitive AI chip typically takes years and significant capital. Manufacturing poses another hurdle as the US ‌bans Chinese designers from accessing the most advanced ​overseas foundries, while separate US curbs have cut China's access to high-bandwidth memory, a component ‌critical to AI inference chips. If successful, DeepSeek's expansion into semiconductor development would mark a major strategic shift for a company widely hailed in China as the country's AI champion.The Hangzhou-based company has also increased hiring of chip-design engineers in recent months, but recruitment has been done privately without job postings on public hiring platforms, two of the sources said. All three people declined to be identified because the information is not public. For DeepSeek, the effort carries an added strategic dimension. US export controls bar Chinese companies from buying Nvidia's most advanced chips, and Beijing has been pressing its technology champions to build domestic alternatives. DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng said in a rare 2024 interview with a Chinese media outlet that chip export controls were a challenge for the company.DeepSeek has used both Nvidia and Huawei chips. The company has said the foundation model underpinning R1, the reasoning model whose low-cost performance triggered a rout in US tech stocks in January 2025, was trained on Nvidia's H800, a chip designed for the Chinese market that Washington banned in late 2023. Shares of US-based Nvidia slipped about 1.6 per cent in premarket trading following news of DeepSeek’s plans for an in-house AI chip."Nvidia is at zero in China and staying there. DeepSeek has almost no chance of selling silicon outside of China unless it gets access to leading edge manufacturing," said analyst Richard Windsor of Radio Free Mobile, `adding that the development does not affect the chipmaker. DeepSeek did not respond to a request for comment.Additional reporting from agencies