Lessons from DeepSeek

The frugal innovator has just told the world that AI need not be a tool for just the few with billions to spend

- 

Liang Wenfeng hasn't graduated from any of the fancy Ivy League universities, nor does he work in one of the storied Big Tech names. Yet, this Zhejiang University graduate has shook up the generative artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem, prompting even Donald Trump to treat the two-year-old DeepSeek as a wake-up call. For once, there can be no debate over Trump's messaging. The Chinese local language model (LLM) maker's launch of its reasoning model R1 last week has challenged not just the dominance of players like OpenAI but has also questioned America's supremacy in the global AI race. For an industry built on the belief that scale is king, DeepSeek may be representing the start of a new era—one in which innovation, rather than sheer resources, determines success.