DeepSeek V4 Expected to Launch in April 2026 After Shifting to NVIDIA Hardware

DeepSeek, one of China's leading AI research companies, has reportedly pushed back the launch of its next-generation V4 multimodal foundation model to the second half of April 2026. The delay, which extends the timeline by over two years from some industry expectations, is directly attributed to critical failures encountered while training the massive model on domestic Huawei Ascend 910B processors. This hardware setback forced a major strategic and architectural pivot mid-development.

To salvage the project and ensure the model meets its performance benchmarks, DeepSeek engineers shifted the final scaling and training phases to NVIDIA's GPU hardware platform. This move away from China's flagship AI chip highlights ongoing challenges in the global semiconductor race for AI supremacy. The completion on NVIDIA infrastructure suggests DeepSeek prioritized model stability and capability over purely domestic sourcing, aiming to compete directly with Western counterparts like GPT-5 and Claude 4.

The incident underscores the intense pressure and technical hurdles in developing frontier AI models, where hardware reliability is paramount. For DeepSeek, a company known for its open-source Llama-challenger models, this delay and pivot represent a significant operational hurdle but also a commitment to launching a competitive product. The AI community will be watching to see if the NVIDIA-powered V4 can close the gap with anticipated releases from OpenAI and Anthropic expected well before 2026.