Tech giants like Alibaba and ByteDance, in addition to a handful of startups with deep-pocketed buyers, dominate the Chinese AI area, making it difficult for small or medium-sized enterprises to compete. A company like DeepSeek, which has no plans to boost funds, is uncommon.
Zihan Wang, the previous DeepSeek worker, informed MIT Technology Review that he had entry to plentiful computing assets and was given freedom to experiment when working at DeepSeek, “a luxury that few fresh graduates would get at any company.”
In an interview with the Chinese media outlet 36Kr in July 2024 Liang mentioned that a further problem Chinese corporations face on top of chip sanctions, is that their AI engineering methods are usually much less environment friendly. “We [most Chinese companies] have to consume twice the computing power to achieve the same results. Combined with data efficiency gaps, this could mean needing up to four times more computing power. Our goal is to continuously close these gaps,” he mentioned.
But DeepSeek discovered methods to cut back reminiscence utilization and pace up calculation with out considerably sacrificing accuracy. “The team loves turning a hardware challenge into an opportunity for innovation,” says Wang.
Liang himself stays deeply concerned in DeepSeek’s analysis course of, operating experiments alongside his staff. “The whole team shares a collaborative culture and dedication to hardcore research,” Wang says.
As effectively as prioritizing effectivity, Chinese corporations are more and more embracing open-source ideas. Alibaba Cloud has released over 100 new open-source AI fashions, supporting 29 languages and catering to varied functions, together with coding and arithmetic. Similarly, startups like Minimax and 01.AI have open-sourced their fashions.
According to a white paper released final yr by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a state-affiliated analysis institute, the variety of AI massive language fashions worldwide has reached 1,328, with 36% originating in China. This positions China because the second-largest contributor to AI, behind the United States.
“This generation of young Chinese researchers identify strongly with open-source culture because they benefit so much from it,” says Thomas Qitong Cao, an assistant professor of expertise coverage at Tufts University.