Analyst: DeepSeek can't profit on Huawei chips anytime soon, two-year payback vs 10-month target
teortaxesTex · x · 2026-09-27
Astra's back-of-envelope math suggests DeepSeek cannot turn a profit on any reasonable timescale running inference on Huawei accelerators, let alone Liang's targeted 10-month payback.
- Key numbers: 640 accepted output tok/s per installed 950DT at $45k, or 980 tok/s per 960DT at $70k — under blended tariffs this only supports a two-year system cash payback.
- teortaxesTex argues these throughput estimates are likely far too low (Astra missing a ton), but the core question remains accelerator cost.
Related event: Analyst Questions DeepSeek's Profitability on Huawei Chips(2 posts)→
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