DeepSeek's AI Breakthrough: A Year On, the Global Race Heats Up

In what became known as the “DeepSeek moment”, the Hangzhou-based firm kicked off what some likened as a modern-day “Sputnik moment” for China’s AI ambitions. “DeepSeek will always have a unique place [in Chinese AI development] as the lab that changed the tone of this co-opetition between the US and China,” said Kevin Xu, founder of technology hedge fund Interconnected Capital. Its emergence, he said, suggested that China was closer to the US in advanced AI development than many had previously believed. The breakthrough by the Hangzhou-based lab in training advanced AI systems with inferior chips on a shoestring budget in the face of sweeping US export controls underscored its intention to help China overcome the export ban, said Chelsey Tam, senior equity analyst at investment consultancy Morningstar.