Huawei markets its best AI chip, the 950DT, as a training chip. DeepSeek is ordering at least 160,000 and has no current plan to train on any of them. Training stays on Nvidia. My July analysis argued China's chips had crossed the training threshold, and that the open question was efficiency. This purchase order reads as DeepSeek's answer to that question.

In June 2024, Reuters covered Genspark's seed round and identified its two founders as former Baidu executives. TechCrunch did the same. In June 2026, Reuters covered Genspark's latest funding at a $2.6 billion valuation. This time the founding team was described as alumni of Microsoft, Google, Meta, YouTube and Pinterest. Baidu had dropped from the wire copy. Nothing was erased. Eric Jing's X profile still reads "Ex-CPO @Baidu Search." Kay Zhu's LinkedIn still lists both Baidu roles. The record is fully available. But look at the company-controlled materials. MainFunc's website, Genspark's parent, describes a team from Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Pinterest. Baidu is absent. In a paid-content series produced by the WSJ's advertising department, Jing's biography reads "20 years in search, beginning at Microsoft and helping launch Bing." The Baidu years became a nameless stint. The deepest shared credential of the founding team is years at Baidu, building Xiaodu together. Jing was CEO of the division. Zhu was CTO. That history now sits outside the company's standard English-language introduction. Whether Genspark drove this shift or merely benefited from it cannot be determined from public evidence. What can be observed is the outcome: the narrative presented to investors and enterprise buyers now foregrounds American affiliations. The piece maps how Chinese AI founders assemble offshore identities, and why the access those identities buy remains conditional. Genspark is the opening case.

Huawei is selling Ascend 950DT systems bundled with DeepSeek's V4 model to customers in the Middle East and Central Asia. US export controls aimed to limit Chinese AI chip capability. An unintended consequence: they may be creating demand for Chinese AI infrastructure in countries that also face restricted Nvidia access. Full analysis of what this means for the chip landscape.

Moonshot AI's Kimi has reportedly hit $300 million ARR as of mid-June, with API revenue exceeding 70% of total. A new funding round is underway at $31.5 billion pre-money, per Chinese financial media. Four months ago, the valuation was $10 billion.