Tech giants like Alibaba and ByteDance, as well as a handful of startups with deep-pocketed investors, dominate the Chinese AI space, making it challenging for small or medium-sized enterprises to compete. A company like DeepSeek, which has no plans to raise funds, is rare.
Zihan Wang, the former DeepSeek employee, had access to abundant computing resources and was given freedom to experiment when working at DeepSeek, a luxury that few fresh graduates would get at any company.
In July 2024 Liang said that an additional challenge Chinese companies face on top of chip sanctions, is that their AI engineering techniques tend to be less efficient. Chinese companies have to consume twice the computing power to achieve the same results. Combined with data efficiency gaps, this could mean needing up to four times more computing power. The goal is to continuously close these gaps.
But DeepSeek found ways to reduce memory usage and speed up calculation without significantly sacrificing accuracy. The team loves turning a hardware challenge into an opportunity for innovation.
Liang himself remains deeply involved in DeepSeek’s research process, running experiments alongside his team. The whole team shares a collaborative culture and dedication to hardcore research.
As well as prioritizing efficiency, Chinese companies are increasingly embracing open-source principles. Alibaba Cloud has released over 100 new open-source AI models, supporting 29 languages and catering to various applications, including coding and mathematics. Similarly, startups like Minimax and 01.AI have open-sourced their models.
The number of AI large language models worldwide has reached 1,328, with 36% originating in China. This positions China as the second-largest contributor to AI, behind the United States.
This generation of young Chinese researchers identify strongly with open-source culture because they benefit so much from it. Chinese researchers are playing a significant role in the development of AI technology, and their contributions are expected to continue growing in the future.
