DeepSeek and Masa Son Have Lessons for Stargate
China has shown that scarcity can fuel innovation. Americans should be cautious that excess doesn’t breed waste.
China’s DeepSeek has lessons for the US.
Photographer: Lam Yik/Bloomberg
Building out cutting-edge artificial intelligence capabilities on a multi-hundred-billion-dollar budget would be impressive. But what’s more remarkable? Creating tools that go toe-to-toe for a tiny fraction of that figure.
That’s a simplistic read on the past week’s biggest global AI news. What’s clear is that US tech giants have entered panic mode, and global tech stocks are taking a beating, as mainstream news outlets react to Chinese AI lab DeepSeek’s prowess. Its latest model emerged as the talk of the town from Silicon Valley to Davos, and on Monday, DeepSeek’s AI Assistant overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT on Apple Inc.’s US App Store. I’ve had my eye on DeepSeek for a while, writing back in June that its strength suggests Washington’s attempts to hold China back in this race could backfire. It’s now showing the world that breakthroughs can happen on, as one OpenAI founding member dubbed it: “A joke of a budget.”