Post caption
The big news of the week was the release of a Chinese AI model that took the tech world by storm.
DeepSeek, a subsidiary of a quant firm called High-Flyer Capital Management, released R1, which essentially matches OpenAI’s most powerful model, at a fraction of the cost to users – and to DeepSeek itself.
Andreessen called R1 one of the most impressive tech breakthroughs he has ever seen and a “profound gift to the world.”
Meta’s head of AI @yannlecun says it’s less about US vs China, and more about the fact that ‘Open source models are surpassing proprietary ones.’
A few days after the publishing of R1, @zuck posted to Threads that Llama will become the leading open source AI model in 2025.
I like how @bilawal.ai put it - that this is AI’s Sputnik moment.
The great Chinese vs US AI race is in full-swing.
Follow @eluna.ai to stay updated.
Transcript
There's a Chinese open source AI model that's come for OpenAI's best. It's DeepSeek's r one, and it's causing panic in Silicon Valley. I mean, it's free to yes, and some benchmarks have it beating OpenAI's flagship model no one, which requires a $200 a month subscription. Oh, and their API pricing is 96% cheaper. To understand how insane this is, imagine somebody comes out with a device just as good as the iPhone, but sells it for $50. Now that's not perfectly analogous, but it represents just how big of an existential terror this is to the closed source commercial models from OpenAI, Anthropic, etcetera. Now to make this crazier, DeepSeek was a side project born out of a quant firm, and r one reportedly required $5,000,000 to create. Now that's under dispute because they might have a black market in video pipeline they don't disclose. But, I mean, that's less than the total comp package of a single exec in big tech AI. It's looking like open source is the clear winner. The the closed models are gonna have to rely on brand, incredible consumer experiences or some sort of regulatory or political favoring. I mean, by the way, DeepSeek does have government imposed censorship. I mean, try asking about Tiananmen Square or Xi Jinping. But therein lies the magic of open source. I mean, r one, llama, you can fine tune these yourself and build on top of them. And there's an incredibly vibrant community of developers doing just that, which is why I think open source is the future of AI. And the great China versus America AI race is in full swing. Let me know what you think about DeepSeek's R1. See you soon.