source S-0044
Will DePue, X thread: "I have a major result to share" (Chinese labs on Blackwell)
Lead long-form post plus 10 self-replies posted 21:29:42–21:30:00 UTC on Nov. 12, 2026 (15:29 CT). Retrieved in full (long-post text via note_tweet) through public X API reads; raw JSON in sources/raw/x-willdepue-blackwell-thread-2026-11-12.json, verbatim text in sources/raw/x-willdepue-blackwell-thread-2026-11-12.md.
Metrics at retrieval (~00:05 CT Nov. 13): lead post 3,902,660 impressions, 30,085 likes, 4,542 reposts, 1,603 quotes. Author profile at retrieval: "prev @ openai (sora 1 & 2, posttraining o3/4o, pretraining moonshots)", 94,351 followers.
The lead post links the full report (S-0045). Note: the lead post still carries the first cost/GPU estimates (2,000–3,000 GPUs; $150–200M per cluster), which the report later revised (F-0045).
Referenced by (11)
- fact F-0042 Will DePue posts thread and report claiming Blackwell fingerprints in Chinese open-weight models
- fact F-0044 The report lists no signature for DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, in its main "Limits" section and appendix; the thread does not mention it
- fact F-0045 DePue revises his GPU-count and cost estimates upward on the same day
- claim C-0043 DePue: "conclusive forensic evidence" the top 4 Chinese labs built their newest models on Blackwell
- claim C-0044 DePue report: six models from four labs were initialized on Blackwell-class hardware (148/152 SMs); earlier models read as Hopper
- claim C-0045 DePue: the result was independently verified by senior researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic
- claim C-0046 DePue: the largest runs used thousands of Blackwell GPUs; over half a billion dollars, likely billions in total
- claim C-0047 DePue: "it’s clear that the export bans are deeply failing"
- claim C-0048 DePue: released "after consulting with advisors and corresponding with officials"
- claim C-0051 @dummerspast39: DePue "left out" that DeepSeek’s newest model, V4.1-Flash, showed nothing
- claim C-0053 @ariaurelium: the forensics proves "something that nobody is concealing" because DeepSeek publishes Blackwell kernels