DailyPost 3041
DEEPSEEK – THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF AI
When a technology transforms to a general purpose technology in this modern world, it is next to impossible to guess its progress and the direction it would take. No one knows which companies will take the lead and which tech leaders would decide its future trajectory. It is no gainsaying that the lead of a company or a country cannot be taken for granted. Everybody joins the bandwagon and tries to tap it to its advantage.This the story of AI, the apex of all technologies, as it has been unfolding, in the last decade or so and emphatically, since ChatGPT made AI a centre piece technology, on the watershed day of 30th Nov. 2025.
Hard work, a different approach to research, creation of a new brand of technology in AI space and destiny of the conversational model, brought OpenAI to where it is today. The challengers threw their hat in the ring pretty swiftly, and the competitors today are challenging the supremacy and quite successfully. Others outside the known tech space and maybe a different geography too, given the immense rewards, start trying their luck. One such company making waves is DeepSeek, forcing not only the AI world, but the whole world to take notice. Releasing its models as open source has been a game changer, in an extremely capital intensive industry.
From Hedge fund to creating a successful AI product company is certainly astounding. In 2015, High-Flyer the hedge fund was set up by three engineers, who started trading as students in the 2007-08 financial crisis. It used machine learning for stock trades. In 2019 High-Flyer AI was dedicated to AI algorithm research. As recently as April 2023, High-Flyer declared that it would create an independent body for AGI research. In May, 2023, DeepSeek was launched, funded by High-Flyer. By as early as May 2024, it released DeepDeek-V2, which offered strong performance at a very challenging price.
It marked a serious beginning for China’s AI model price war. It forced ByteDance, Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba to start cutting the price of their AI models. There is no denying the fact that rival companies have been losing money, while DeepSeek remained profitable even while charging a low price. What makes it stand out as it is focused only on research and has no detailed plans for commercialisation. It’s freaky HR has been delivering fine so far. The company gives a preference for ability more than experience. It is for this reason that most of its developers are either fresh graduates, or people early in their AI career. DeepSeek in a company with a difference in the AI space.
AI IS SLOWLY BUT STEADILY MOVING TOWARDS BECOMING AN AFFORDABLE TECHNOLOGY.
Sanjay Sahay