Kevin Roose

And so investors start saying, wait a minute, if it only costs $5.5 million to train a leading-edge AI model, then... What the heck are all these American companies doing spending hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions of dollars to train roughly equivalent models?

And so investors start saying, wait a minute, if it only costs $5.5 million to train a leading-edge AI model, then... What the heck are all these American companies doing spending hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions of dollars to train roughly equivalent models?

And so the stocks of many of the American tech companies start to fall.

And so the stocks of many of the American tech companies start to fall.

And so after all of this, people in the American tech industry start asking questions like, who is DeepSeq? And how are they getting these incredible models with so little money spent on them?

And so after all of this, people in the American tech industry start asking questions like, who is DeepSeq? And how are they getting these incredible models with so little money spent on them?

So it depends who you ask, because there are a couple kind of overlapping panics that are starting to happen around this time. Of course, again, there's the investor panic. I mean, imagine if you had your whole portfolio invested in American AI companies.

So it depends who you ask, because there are a couple kind of overlapping panics that are starting to happen around this time. Of course, again, there's the investor panic. I mean, imagine if you had your whole portfolio invested in American AI companies.

It would be like if you just bought like a very high-end sports car, like a Lamborghini, and you had been driving it around and were so proud of how fast it could accelerate and how well it handled. And then like some random guy shows up with like a soapbox car made of balsa wood, and it can go just as fast as your car. You'd be like, what the heck?

It would be like if you just bought like a very high-end sports car, like a Lamborghini, and you had been driving it around and were so proud of how fast it could accelerate and how well it handled. And then like some random guy shows up with like a soapbox car made of balsa wood, and it can go just as fast as your car. You'd be like, what the heck?

Why did I just spend all this money on this Lamborghini?

Why did I just spend all this money on this Lamborghini?

Yes. And then, of course, there's the geopolitical freakout because DeepSeek is a Chinese AI company. And there has been this race happening between primarily the U.S. and China for years about AI and AI supremacy. Who was going to be able to build the most powerful AI models before the other one? And that is a very important question for things like assessing the future of military conflict.

Yes. And then, of course, there's the geopolitical freakout because DeepSeek is a Chinese AI company. And there has been this race happening between primarily the U.S. and China for years about AI and AI supremacy. Who was going to be able to build the most powerful AI models before the other one? And that is a very important question for things like assessing the future of military conflict.

If one country's AI is way better than another country's AI, they might have an advantage. In fact, the U.S. has banned the export of the most powerful AI chips to China for exactly this reason, to try to... sort of hobble the Chinese AI companies to keep them from catching up when it comes to building the bleeding edge models that could become very important.

If one country's AI is way better than another country's AI, they might have an advantage. In fact, the U.S. has banned the export of the most powerful AI chips to China for exactly this reason, to try to... sort of hobble the Chinese AI companies to keep them from catching up when it comes to building the bleeding edge models that could become very important.

So instead, DeepSeq had to kind of make do with these like Kirkland signature chips that are, you know, pretty good, but they're not the best. And so that combined with the amount of money spent really made people say, how do they pull this thing off?

So instead, DeepSeq had to kind of make do with these like Kirkland signature chips that are, you know, pretty good, but they're not the best. And so that combined with the amount of money spent really made people say, how do they pull this thing off?

Yeah, so there are a lot of people who are skeptical of what DeepSeek has claimed. In particular, the cost of the model, $5.5 million might not be the real figure. It doesn't include all of the research and the engineer salaries and things that went into that, so that the real cost is probably significantly higher than that.

Yeah, so there are a lot of people who are skeptical of what DeepSeek has claimed. In particular, the cost of the model, $5.5 million might not be the real figure. It doesn't include all of the research and the engineer salaries and things that went into that, so that the real cost is probably significantly higher than that.