Within China, it was called Tipping Point for Global Technological Rivalality with the United States and the “darkest hour” in Silicon Valley, evoking Winston Churchill. It was probably a progress that could change the fate of the country.
The news that the Chinese beginning Deepseek can build artificial intelligence models that are as good as Openai’s, and with part of the cost, tanked the stock market on Monday and sent Silicon Valley to a panic.
The claim of Deepseek’s success was viewed in China as a blow to the arm for a discouraged technology industry and a public suffering through a stalled economy. In social media posts and state media, Deepseek was nothing less than a testimony of the country’s ability to renew, especially when faced with the United States’ efforts to limit China’s access to more advanced technologies.
“A nation like China, which is equipped with significant technological resources, cannot really be printed,” wrote Hujin, a retired editor of the Communist Party Chief Tabloid Global Times. “US sanctions in an area will only promote the most comprehensive and elastic progress in China, potentially leading to advances that transcend the US”
American semiconductors’ policies against China “can eventually attack the US,” he wrote.
On Monday evening, four of the 10 most popular topics on Weibo Social Media Platform were related to Deepseek.
“Deepseek, continue the moment!” A Weibo user in Beijing wrote.
“The nation must protect the founder of Deepseek at all costs! Seriously! “Wrote another user in Shanghai who usually posts about the news of the entertainment.
Another hashtag about Deepseek’s chief executive, Liang Wenfeng, visiting his hometown in the South Guangdong province for the Lunar New Year, which falls Wednesday, was a hot topic on Weibo. There were more than 50 million views.
Much of the attention highlighted the rivalry of American technology.
The assumption that the United States would run the other tide of the technological revolution was now open to challenge, Li Chengdong, a email investor, wrote in his WeChat deadline.
Fanceiju, a business blog in Wechat, had a post saying that Deepseek had exploded the US stock bubble in a more important strike than when George Soros Bast against the British Pound in 1992.
Deepseek’s progress had returned the initiative of that $ 100 billion known as Stargate that President Trump announced last week at “Interstellar Cemetery”, a post in Fanceiju said.
The commentary was proud of the tremendous pride that Deepseek was equipped with talented Chinese -educated China technologists.
Deepseek distributed the myth of the predominance of American talent of him and companies democratized such as Openai, said Tom Zhang, a human resource expert who has worked in several major technology companies in Silicon Valley. “A group of PH.D. graduates from Tsinghua and Peking University exceeds their counterparts from Stanford and MIT,” he wrote in his time.
Entrepreneurs and investors said Deepseek demonstrated that the sector I China had an advantage in innovation. They also said they believed that the export restrictions of the US government to chips specialized by technology giant Silicon Valley Nvidia forced Chinese companies to be more efficient.
That was not what Washington thought, people in China said, but that was what happened.
Deepseek he trained his chatbot with 2,000 specialized Nvidia chips, compared to as many 16,000 chips used by leading US counterparts. It is also not the only Chinese company that proves the efficiency of its engineering: 01.ai, a startup founded by Kaifu Lee, a Beijing investor and entrepreneur, trained his models with computing power costing about $ 3 million, The company said, compared to $ 80 to $ 100 million Openai has tapped.
“In my book the superpowers of that, I predicted that the US will lead progress, but China will be better and faster in engineering,” Mr. Lee, who studied artificial intelligence at Carnegie Mello in the 1980s, wrote on Sunday on X. “With Deepseek’s latest omissions, I feel justified.”
Among the most popular articles on Chinese internet were two interviews of Mr. Liang, the attractive chief executive, with a technology blog.
In the interviews, Mr. Liang, who founded a quantitative trade firm called High Flyer after graduating with a master’s degree in artificial intelligence, encountered as a billionaire geeky full of idealism and optimism. He began Deepseek as a side project in 2023 because he wanted to explore the borders he said, he said.
Mr. Liang said he believed that innovation was, first of all, a matter of faith.
“Why is Silicon Valley so innovative? Begins with the courage to try. “He said. Mr. Liang pointed out when Openai’s Chatgt came out, China suffered from a lack of confidence to pursue such innovation. “From investors to large technology companies, many thought the gap was very wide,” he said.
As China’s economy develops, he said, China should gradually become a contributor to the technology innovation than a follower.
He said he believed China’s economic slowdown was not necessarily a bad thing because it could force the company’s founders to be driven less by financial success.
“When many people realize that making quick money in the past is likely because of the fate of times,” Mr. Liang, “They will become more willing to focus on genuine innovation.”
Mr. Liang told the blog that he had hired mostly young graduates or even graduate students with little work experience. Memberdo a team member working in a model who was released last spring graduated from a Chinese university, he said.
“The 50 best talents may not be in China currently, but we may be cultivated ourselves such talent,” he said, a quote that has been reprinted many times. People on social media portrayed Deepseek employees as a genius, posting their names and mentioning their educational ancestry and academic letters.
Mr. Liang, born in 1985, did not attract much public attention until last week when he joined a group of businessmen and academics for a meeting with Li Qiang, the Prime Minister of China.
The meeting was a sign that Mr. Liang was raised to the top, but could also put it in a difficult position, technology drivers said. The relationship between Chinese entrepreneurs and the government has been complicated after Beijing’s hit in the technology sector in recent years. The government wants companies to help China a less dependent technological power in the United States. But it is also wary of the impact of companies. Expiring pressing Chinese Internet promise.
An investor in Hong Kong told me that he would not invest in Chinese internet actions as long as Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, was in office – even with Deepseek’s progress. Mr. Xi is known for his dislike for the Internet sector.
Business executives hope the government can refrain from interfering with Deepseek.
“As is often the case with this government,” wrote Zhang Fuyu, an entrepreneur, in Wechat, “every promising company is included in a national strategy – receiving funds and resources, but subject to state directives – or is directly under control, , Then the future perspectives of Deepseek may be fully embedded. “
According to government rules, models of those that serve customers are subject to censorship rules. Many Deepseek users posted photos and videos of her censorship censorship topics, including Xi Jinping, War in Ukraine, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacre.
“If Deepseek is really as extraordinary as it is claimed, so influential as to tighten the stock market in the US, yet it remains limited to being a model with Chinese socialist characteristics,” one journalist used using Xiaoming handle in the account its threads, “then that would be truly tragic.”