Summary
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek initially claimed to have trained its competitive R1 model with only $6 million and 2,048 GPUs.
However, a SemiAnalysis report reveals the company has actually invested $1.6 billion in hardware and owns 50,000 Nvidia GPUs.
DeepSeek has also spent well over $500 million on AI development since its inception.
DeepSeek operates its own data centers and exclusively hires from China, offering top salaries.
The report suggests its success stems from major investments rather than radical efficiency, countering initial claims of disruptive cost reductions.
Oh you mean yet another revolutionary breakthrough from China turned out to be just smoke in mirrors? I am shocked! shocked I tell you!
And still, the reaction on the stock market showed how fragile and overblown yet not well understood the whole LLM technology is. Maybe at least some investors learned to tread more carefully and be more realistic about their expectations… but I’m not holding my breath.
Bone apple tea
For all intensive purposes, yes.