C/PAdvanced-compute evidence ledgerWhen Controls Raise the Cost

Evidence ledger / 5 records

Every claim should survive inspection.

Each card records the proposition, the best available public source, the exact place to look, the strongest qualification, and what remains unknown.

Confidence describes the scoped claim. “Primary” means original or official for that claim—not independent verification.

CSV JSON
  1. EV-01 · ev-deepseek-compute
    SupportsHigh confidence

    Claim

    DeepSeek reports training a 671B-parameter MoE on 14.8 trillion tokens with 2.788 million H800 GPU-hours.

    Technical preprint · PrimaryDeepSeek-V3 Technical ReportDeepSeek-AI
    Published
    2024-12-27
    Accessed
    2026-09-03
    Location
    Abstract; section 1; Table 1

    Quotation or data

    “2.788M H800 GPU hours.”

    Counterevidence

    The run and benchmarks are author-reported and have not been independently reproduced end to end.

    Remaining uncertainty

    The public report does not establish acquisition dates, electricity use, or total program cost.

  2. EV-02 · ev-deepseek-cost
    QualifiesHigh confidence

    Claim

    The widely repeated $5.576 million figure is a rental-equivalent training-compute estimate, not an all-in development cost.

    Technical preprint · PrimaryDeepSeek-V3 Technical ReportDeepSeek-AI
    Published
    2024-12-27
    Accessed
    2026-09-03
    Location
    Section 1, note immediately below Table 1

    Quotation or data

    Prior research and ablation costs “are not included.”

    Counterevidence

    The narrow figure remains useful for comparing the disclosed final run if its scope is stated.

    Remaining uncertainty

    R&D, acquisition, depreciation, staff, data, networking, and failed-run costs are undisclosed.

  3. EV-03 · ev-deepseek-independent
    SupportsModerate confidence

    Claim

    On METR’s autonomy suite, DeepSeek-V3 was comparable to Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Old), while trailing newer frontier models.

    Independent evaluation · Independent / secondaryDetails about METR’s Preliminary Evaluation of DeepSeek-V3METR
    Published
    2025-02-12
    Accessed
    2026-09-03
    Location
    Opening findings; General Autonomous Capabilities

    Quotation or data

    METR reported comparable autonomy performance to Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Old), with weaker results than newer frontier models.

    Counterevidence

    METR used basic elicitation and warned that looping and other failures might understate or distort capability.

    Remaining uncertainty

    Benchmark performance is task- and elicitation-dependent and does not establish frontier parity.

  4. EV-04 · ev-deepseek-dependency
    SupportsHigh confidence

    Claim

    Nvidia identified H800 as a product covered by the October 2023 China licensing restrictions.

    Regulatory filing · PrimaryNVIDIA Corporation Form 10-K for Fiscal 2024NVIDIA Corporation / U.S. SEC
    Published
    2024-02-21
    Accessed
    2026-09-03
    Location
    Item 1, Government Regulations—Global Trade

    Quotation or data

    Restrictions on H800 shipments took effect on 23 October 2023.

    Counterevidence

    DeepSeek may have acquired its H800 fleet before the restriction took effect; acquisition timing is not public.

    Remaining uncertainty

    The size and provenance of DeepSeek’s remaining controlled-hardware inventory are unknown.

  5. EV-05 · ev-deepseek-repro
    QualifiesHigh confidence

    Claim

    The public repository enables inference and inspection of model weights but not reproduction of the full training run.

    Company repository · PrimaryDeepSeek-V3 Official RepositoryDeepSeek-AI
    Published
    2024-12-26
    Accessed
    2026-09-03
    Location
    Repository README, model downloads and inference sections

    Quotation or data

    The release includes weights and inference examples for Nvidia, AMD, and Ascend.

    Counterevidence

    Open weights make broad deployment and independent downstream testing possible.

    Remaining uncertainty

    Training data, the full HAI-LLM stack, and exact full-run configuration are unavailable.