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Where did you read that it was trained on Ascends?

I've only seen information suggesting that you can run inference with Ascends, which is obviously a very different thing. The source you link also just says: "The latest model was developed using domestically manufactured chips for inference, including Huawei's flagship Ascend chip and products from leading industry players such as Moore Threads, Cambricon and Kunlunxin, according to the statement."

I took the "for inference" bit from that sentence you quoted as a qualifier applied to the chips, as in the chips were originally developed for inference but were now used for training too.

Note that Z.ai also publically announced that they trained another model, GLM-Image, entirely on Huawei Ascend silicon a month ago [1].

[1] https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3339869/zhipu-ai-...

Thanks. I'm like 95% sure that you're wrong, and that GLM-5 was trained on NVIDIA GPUs, or at least not on Huawei Ascends.

As I wrote in another comment, I think so for a few reasons:

1. The z.ai blog post says GML-5 is compatible with Ascends for inference, without mentioning training -- it says they support "deploying GLM-5 on non-NVIDIA chips, including Huawei Ascend, Moore Threads, Cambricon, Kunlun Chip, MetaX, Enflame, and Hygon" -- many different domestic chips. Note "deploying". https://z.ai/blog/glm-5

2. The SCMP piece you linked just says: "Huawei’s Ascend chips have proven effective at training smaller models like Zhipu’s GLM-Image, but their efficacy for training the company’s flagship series of large language models, such as the next-generation GLM-5, was still to be determined, according to a person familiar with the matter."

3. You're right that z.ai trained a small image model on Ascends. They made a big fuss about it too. If they had trained GLM-5 with Ascends, they likely would've shouted it from the rooftops. https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/15/zhipu_glm_image_huawe...

4. Ascends just aren't that good

Exactly. The emperor has no clothes. The largest investments in US tech in history and yet there less than a year of moat. OpenAI or Anthropic will not be able to compete with Chinese server farms and so the US strategy is misplaced investments that will come home to roast.

And we will have Deepseek 4 in a few days...

US Secretary of State Bressent just publicly said that the US needs to get along and cooperate with China. His tone was so different than previously in the last year that I listened to the video clip twice.

Obviously for the average US tax payer getting along with China is in our interests - not so much our economic elites.

I use both Chinese and US models, and Mistral in Proton’s private chat. I think it makes sense for us to be flexible and not get locked in.

>His tone was so different than previously in the last year that I listened to the video clip twice.

US bluff got called. A year back it looked like US held all the cards and could squeeze others without negative consequences. i.e. have cake and eat it too

Since then: China has not backed down, Europe is talking de-dollarization, BRICS is starting to find a new gear on separate financial system, merciless mocking across the board, zero progress on ukraine, fed wobbled, focus on gold as alternate to US fiat, nato wobbled, endless scandals, reputation for TACO, weak employment, tariff chaos, calls for withdrawal of gold from US's safekeeping, chatter about dumping US bonds, multiple major countries being quite explicit about telling trump to get fucked

Not at all surprised there is a more modest tone...none of this is going the "without negative consequences" way

>Mistral in Proton’s private chat

TIL

Who could have predicted that cooperation with decades old allies would be more fruitful than spitting in their faces and threatening them on a weekly basis both economically and militarily... really nobody /s

And yes, the consequence is strengthening the actual enemies of the USA, their AI progress is just one symptom of this disastrous US administration and the incompetence of Donald Trump. He really is the worst President of the USA ever, even if you were to just judge him on his leadership regarding technology... and I'm saying this while he is giving a speech about his "clean beautiful coal" right now in the White House.

To be fair, the US ban on Nvidia chip exports to China began under the Biden administration in 2022. By the time Trump took office, it was already too late.

> What is truly amazing here is the fact that they trained this entirely on Huawei Ascend chips

Has any of these outfits ever publicly stated they used Nvidia chips? As in the non-officially obtained 1s. No.

> US attempts to contain Chinese AI tech totally failed. Not only that, they cost Nvidia possibly trillions of dollars of exports over the next decade, as the Chinese govt called the American bluff and now actively disallow imports of Nvidia chips

Sort of. It's all a front. On both sides. China still ALWAYS had access to Nvidia chips - whether that's the "smuggled" 1s or they run it in another country. It's not costing Nvidia much. The opening of China sales for Nvidia likewise isn't as much of a boon. It's already included.

> At a time when Trump admin is trying to do whatever it can to reduce the US trade imbalance with China

Again, it's a front. It's about news and headlines. Just like when China banned lobsters from a certain country, the only thing that happened was that they went to Hong Kong or elsewhere, got rebadged and still went in.

> Has any of these outfits ever publicly stated they used Nvidia chips? As in the non-officially obtained 1s. No.

Uh yes? Deepseek explicitly said they used H800s [1]. Those were not banned btw, at the time. Then US banned them too. Then US was like 'uhh okay maybe you can have the H200', but then China said not interested.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.19437

> Uh yes? Deepseek explicitly said they used H800s [1]. Those were not banned btw, at the time

Then they haven't. I said the non-officially obtained 1s that they can't / won't mention i.e. those Blackwells etc...

We can conclude that they ll flood the world with huawei inference chips from Temu and create worldwide AI pollution