China floods the world with AI after DeepSeek success

DeepSeek did more than just show the AI industry you don't have to spend billions to build artificial intelligence.

- SARITHA RAI YAZHOU SUN

It fired up a long-dormant Chinese tech industry — and now Western businesses on OpenAI may have to pay the price.

Since DeepSeek upstaged OpenAI in January with a powerful model that purportedly cost just several million dollars to build, China's tech leaders have flooded the market with a rapid succession of low-cost AI services, undercutting premium offerings from the likes of OpenAI and Alphabet's Google. Chinese companies have in the past weeks rolled out dozens of new AI models, updates or releases — and that's just the big names.

Baidu unfurled the Ernie X1, direct competition with DeepSeek's Rl. in early April. Huawei Technologies rolled out its new AI-assisted coding, instant upgrade. Just in the past week, Tencent Holdings trotted out its AI blueprint and answer to the Rl; ANT Group shared findings on how Chinese chips can slash costs to a little. DeepSeek followed up the remodel when Meituan — best known as the world's biggest meal-delivery service — announced it was splashing out billions of dollars on AI.