The Americans think they have it all, with the most advanced AI chips and stopping export to China would cripple or slow down the development of AI in China. Big AI chips, expensive AI chips from Nvidia would rule the world. All the top American AI companies poured in trillions to get hold of these very expensive chips and think they are up there, and China would be years behind, chasing but never catching up...without the big and expensive chips. Biden and Trump have a success formula to slow down China's growth in AI. So they thought.
Immediately after Trump's inauguration, China sent him a gift that he would not forget, the DeepSeek R1. This AI model came out of the blue, not from well established Chinese AI players, but from a hedge fund CEO that has excess computer machine to work on. And the machine was not the top notch models, and the chips were also not the top notch A100 from Nvidia. He used the lower grade H800 that was not banned and permitted to be exported to China by Nvidia.
Boom, with 2 months effort, this fund manager by the name of Liang Wenfeng, delivered this game changing DeepSeek R1 that blew up the whole Silicon Valley. The cost of developing this app was only US$5.5 million, not hundreds of millions or billions that the American big boys have thrown into the ring. The Americans believe that money would rule the world, the more money, the more expensive chips, mean success. This US$5.5m cheap app could beat all the big boys and their multi billion dollar AI apps. Holy cow, the CEOs of these big companies would have a lot of explanation to do for throwing away billions and still wanting to throw more billions thinking that more money is the way to go.
The bombshell is just exploding with more to come. Liang is giving away this high performing and intelligent app for free. Not only that, it is open source which means everything about the app and its source codes are available to all users and developers to further improve on the app and make money from the app with their own adaptations for commercial use. This would immediately kill all the American big boys' app that charged a fee for usage. The billions and trillions spent by these big boys would turn to dust when their revenue flow is choked off.
And more, the DeepSeek R1 is not only giving the American big boys a run for their money, it is energy efficient, and using relative cheaper chips. Amazon and the gang were investing big in acquiring independent energy equipment to support their high energy consumption chips, thousands of the chips drinking energy like water. DeepSeek R1 is energy efficient and could operate under the normal power grid system.
DeepSeek R1 is now the most loaded app in America and the world. Like the TikTok refugees, all AI users and developers are migrating to DeepSeek R1 in droves, for free. No need for Trump to send them away. They are voting with their feet. The new champion has arrived and knocking stars into all its rivals. Performance, efficiency, effectiveness and low energy cost and for free. It is too good to be true. But this one is real!
What, China is a few years behind the Americans in AI and would slow further without Nvidia chips? It is like the Lamborghinis and Ferraris, costing millions but outrun by a Xiaomi or Zeeker EV costing a fraction of their prices. Who needs or wants to throw millions, in the case of AI, billions when they can get something better and cheaper, very much cheaper, a fraction of the cost to work on?