Last week, Chinese AI giants Huawei and DeepSeek announced a new partnership to integrate DeepSeek’s TileLang, a programming framework used for AI training and inference, into Huawei’s Ascend chips. If successful, the deal could challenge one of America’s greatest AI advantages — the tight integration of Nvidia chips with its CUDA software ecosystem — by making it easier and less costly to run demanding AI workloads on Chinese hardware.

According to DeepSeek, TileLang is universal, open-source, and simple to program. According to Huawei, American export controls supercharged its development.