Nvidia provided technical assistance that helped Chinese AI firm DeepSeek significantly improve the efficiency of its artificial intelligence models, which were later believed to be used by China’s military, according to a US lawmaker.
The claims were outlined in a letter sent to the US Commerce Department by Representative John Moolenaar of Michigan, chair of the House Select Committee on China.
According to Moolenaar, this support enabled DeepSeek to train advanced AI models using substantially fewer computing resources than typically required by leading US developers. He wrote that internal Nvidia records showed DeepSeek’s training process used just 2.788 million GPU hours on Nvidia’s H800 chips.
This level of compute usage is far below what is generally associated with frontier-scale AI models developed by US firms such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
The lawmaker acknowledged that there was no public evidence linking DeepSeek to China’s military at the time Nvidia provided assistance. “Nvidia treated DeepSeek accordingly — as a legitimate commercial partner deserving of standard technical support,” Moolenaar wrote.
Nvidia rejected suggestions that its technology was critical to China’s military capabilities. In a statement to Benzinga, the company said, “China has more than enough domestic chips for all of its military applications,” adding that it would make little sense for Beijing to rely on American technology. The company also said, “The Administration’s critics are unintentionally promoting the interests of foreign competitors,” in an emailed response.
China’s embassy in Washington also pushed back against the allegations. In a statement to Reuters, it accused the United States of politicizing trade and technology matters.
DeepSeek attracted international attention early last year after releasing AI models that rivaled top US systems despite being trained with far less computing power. The development heightened concerns among US officials that China could rapidly narrow the AI gap even as Washington tightens restrictions on the export of advanced chips.
US officials have since said they believe DeepSeek’s technology has been used to support China’s military, intensifying the debate around chip exports, corporate responsibility, and national security as competition between the two countries in artificial intelligence accelerates.
