deepseek's r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price.
we will obviously deliver much better models and also it's legit invigorating to have a new competitor! we will pull up some releases.
— Sam Altman (@sama) January 28, 2025
Elon Musk has expressed doubts about the claims made by DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup that has been making waves in the tech industry. DeepSeek’s AI chatbot has been compared to leading American AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but Musk remains unconvinced. DeepSeek claims to have achieved significant advancements with a much smaller investment than its competitors, using around 10,000 A100 Nvidia GPUs.
Another odd aspect of the sudden attention to DeepSeek is a lot of people assuming it is the first open weights* models. One of the biggest companies in the US has spent billions making open models & intends to keep doing so.
*not open source, there is no access to training data
— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) January 29, 2025
However, Musk and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang speculate that the company might be withholding information about its true hardware capacity due to US export controls. Wang suggests DeepSeek likely has access to around 50,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs, making their AI system far more powerful than publicly disclosed.
Musk’s skepticism on DeepSeek’s claims
Musk’s skepticism was evident in his brief replies on X (formerly known as Twitter).
The most unnerving part of the DeepSeek reaction online has been seeing folks take it as a sign that AI capability growth is not real
It signals the opposite, large improvements are possible, and is almost certain to kick off an acceleration in AI development through competition
— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) January 29, 2025
When Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff praised DeepSeek’s accomplishments and suggested that data and metadata are the real value of AI, Musk responded with a dismissive “Lmao, no.” He also took the opportunity to poke fun at the company’s Chinese origins, replying with a laughing emoji when a user joked about DeepSeek’s AI being “leaked from a lab in China.”
Despite the buzz surrounding DeepSeek, Musk’s responses indicate he does not believe the company’s AI poses a serious challenge to the dominance of US tech giants like OpenAI. His skepticism highlights the growing rivalry between AI firms in the US and China.
The rise of DeepSeek has also impacted the market, with Nvidia, a key supplier of GPUs for AI, seeing a significant drop in its market cap following the announcement of DeepSeek’s latest AI product. As the AI landscape continues to evolve, the competition between US and Chinese firms is likely to intensify, with Musk’s comments adding fuel to the ongoing debate about the true capabilities of emerging AI technologies.
Cameron is a highly regarded contributor in the rapidly evolving fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. His articles delve into the theoretical underpinnings of AI, the practical applications of machine learning across industries, ethical considerations of autonomous systems, and the societal impacts of these disruptive technologies.
