DeepSeek to boost AI infra firms

DOMESTIC ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) compute infrastructure and data centre solution providers such as E2E, Netweb Technologies, NxtGen Datacenter, Yotta, CtrlS, among others, are hopeful of a significant increase in business potential with low cost open source models like DeepSeek.

- JATIN GROVER

The reasons for the same can be attributed to largely three factors. First, the development of models like DeepSeek at lower cost has given a blueprint to startups and companies that they can also develop language models without the need for expensive, large numbers of GPUs.

Second, since DeepSeek is an open source model, startups can leverage its APIs at significantly lower costs compared to its competitors such as OpenAI, thereby prompting more demand for domestic AI infrastructure providers. Third, such low cost models and lower compute will also lead to increase in take-up of graphics processing unit (GPU) as a service model, wherein the compute providers lease the GPUs at an hourly rate, tech experts said.

Notably, DeepSeek is not the first open source model but the new thing is that it is built by a non-US company and at significantly less cost of about $5.6 million compared to $100 million for GPT-4 model training.