‘Game on’: Tech execs say DeepSeek ramps up China-U.S. competition but won’t hurt OpenAI
Tech bosses largely agree the risk DeepSeek poses to OpenAI remains limited for now.
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The technological advances that Chinese artificial intelligence lab DeepSeek have displayed show the game is on when it comes to U.S.-Sino competition on AI, top tech executives told CNBC.
In a series of interviews at France’s Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, leaders of several major tech companies told CNBC that the emergence of DeepSeek demonstrates that China can’t be counted out as a serious player when it comes to AI innovation.
Last month, DeepSeek shocked global markets with a technical paper saying that one of its new AI models was created with a total training cost of less than $6 million — far less than the billions upon billions of dollars being spent by Big Tech players and Western AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, told CNBC that DeepSeek’s advanced, low-cost model confirms there is a “very real competition between U.S.-led, small D democratic AI and CCP [Chinese Communist Party] China-led autocratic, authoritarian AI.”
Many critics of DeepSeek have pointed to apparent censorship by the model when it comes to sensitive topics. For example, when asked about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, DeepSeek’s AI assistant app responds with: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”
“There’s two countries in the world that can build this at scale,” Lehane told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal on the sidelines of the Paris AI summit Monday. “Imagine if there were only two countries in the world that could build electricity at scale. That’s sort of how you have to think about it.”
“For us, what DeepSeek really reinforces and reaffirms is that there is this very real competition with very real stakes,” Lehane added.
Still, tech bosses largely agreed that even though DeepSeek’s breakthrough shows China being further along in the global AI race than previously thought, the threat it poses to OpenAI remains limited for now.
‘The game is on’
DeepSeek says that its new R1 model, an open-source reasoning model, was able to rival the performance of OpenAI’s own similar o1 model — only using a cheaper, less energy-intensive process.
That led experts to question the prevailing wisdom in the West of the last several years, which is that China is behind the U.S. on AI development because of export restrictions that make it harder for firms in the country to get their hands on more advanced Nvidia graphics processing units, or GPUs.
GPUs are necessary for training and running AI applications because they excel at parallel processing, meaning they can perform multiple calculations simultaneously.
Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn and partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, told CNBC Monday that DeepSeek’s new model is “a big deal in showing that the game is on.”
“The competition is afoot with China,” Hoffman said, adding that DeepSeek’s R1 is “a credible, actionable model.”
Abishur Prakash, founder of strategic advisory firm The Geopolitical Business, told CNBC that DeepSeek shows the West’s understanding of China remains limited.
“America’s assumed place as the technological captain of the world is no longer the acceptable belief,” Prakash told CNBC in a phone interview.
“That is the new status quo now, that the space between the U.S. and China has narrowed almost overnight — but it hasn’t narrowed overnight, it’s been years of progress,” Prakash said.
“If there’s one takeaway for the West, it’s that their understanding of China is incredibly limited — and we don’t know what’s coming next,” he added.
No meaningful threat to U.S. AI — yet
Still, leading AI execs aren’t convinced that DeepSeek poses any sort of meaningful risks to the businesses of AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic just yet.
While experts on the whole agree DeepSeek’s AI advances have been impressive, doubts have been raised about the startup’s claims about cost.
A report from semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis last month estimated that DeepSeek’s hardware expenditure is “well higher” than $500 million over the company’s history. DeepSeek was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
The report found that DeepSeek’s research and development costs and expenses related to ownership are significant and that generating “synthetic data” for the model to train on would require “considerable amount of compute.”
Some technologists believe that DeepSeek may have been able to achieve such a high level of performance by training its models on larger U.S. AI systems.
This technique, known as “distillation,” involves having more powerful AI models evaluate the quality of answers being generated by a newer model.
It’s a claim that OpenAI itself has alluded to, telling CNBC in a statement last month that it’s reviewing reports that DeepSeek may have “inappropriately” used output data from its models to develop its AI model, a method referred to as “distillation.”
“Most of the market fear around [DeepSeek] is in fact misplaced,” Hoffman told CNBC. “It still requires large models — it was distilled from large models.”
“I think the short answer everyone should take is: game on — but large models still really matter,” he added.
Victor Riparbelli, CEO of AI video platform Synthesia, told CNBC that although DeepSeek challenged the “paradigm that brute force scaling is the only way to kind of build better and better models,” the idea that companies are going to suddenly shift significant amounts of their AI workloads is misguided.
“I still think that when you look at users of these technologies, all the workflows, I think when we look back in three months’ time, I think 0.01% of those is going to be moved to Deepseek from OpenAI and Anthropic,” Riparbelli said.
Meredith Whitaker, president of the Signal Foundation, said DeepSeek’s development doesn’t move the needle much for the industry as market momentum is still broadly in favor of larger AI models. The Signal Foundation is a nonprofit that supports the encrypted messaging app Signal.
“This is not something that’s going to disrupt the concentration of power or the geopolitical balance at this stage,” Whitaker told CNBC. “I think we have to keep our eye on the ball there and recognize that it’s really this ‘bigger is better’ paradigm that is not reduced through efficiency gains historically, that is driving this concentration.”
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
OpenAI will not be allowed use the word “cameo” to name any products or features in its Sora app for a month after a federal judge placed a temporary restraining order for the term on the AI startup.
U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee granted a temporary restraining order on Monday, blocking OpenAI from using the “cameo” mark or similar words like “Kameo” or “CameoVideo” for any function related to Sora, the company’s AI-generated video app.
“We disagree with the complaint’s assertion that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word ‘cameo’, and we look forward to continuing to make our case to the court,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC.
Lee granted the order after OpenAI was sued in October by Cameo, a platform that allows users to purchase personalized videos from celebrities. Cameo filed a trademark lawsuit against the artificial intelligence company following the launch of Sora’s “Cameo” feature, which allowed users to generate characters of themselves or others and insert them into videos.
“We are gratified by the court’s decision, which recognizes the need to protect consumers from the confusion that OpenAI has created by using the Cameo trademark,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis said in a statement. “While the court’s order is temporary, we hope that OpenAI will agree to stop using our mark permanently to avoid any further harm to the public or Cameo.”
The order is set to expire on Dec. 22, and a hearing for whether the halt should be made permanent is scheduled for Dec. 19.
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
OpenAI announced a new tool called “shopping research” on Monday, right as consumers will be ramping up spending ahead of the holiday season.
The startup said the tool is designed for ChatGPT users who are looking for detailed, well-researched shopping guides. The guides include top products, key differences between the products and the latest information from retailers, according to a blog.
Users will be able to tailor their guides based on their budget, what features they care about and who they are shopping for. OpenAI said it will take a couple of minutes to generate answers with shopping research, so users who are looking for simple answers like a price check can still rely on a regular ChatGPT response.
When users submit prompts to ChatGPT that say things like, “Find the quietest cordless stick vacuum for a small apartment,” or “I need a gift for my four year old niece who loves art,” they will see the shopping research tool pop up automatically, OpenAI said. The tool can also be accessed from the menu.
OpenAI has been pushing deeper into e-commerce in recent months. The company introduced a feature called Instant Checkout in September that allows users to make purchases directly from eligible merchants through ChatGPT.
Shopping research users will be able to make purchases with Instant Checkout in the future, OpenAI said on Monday.
OpenAI said its shopping research results are organic and based on publicly available retail websites, and that it will not share users’ chats with retailers. It’s possible that shopping research will make mistakes around product availability and pricing, the company said.
Shopping research is rolling out to OpenAI’s Free, Go, Plus and Pro users who are logged in to ChatGPT.
A Tesla logo outside the company’s Tilburg Factory and Delivery Center.
Karol Serewis | Getty Images
Tesla is trying to get its “FSD Supervised” technology approved for use in the Netherlands. But Dutch regulators are telling Tesla fans to stop pressuring safety authority RDW on the matter, and that their efforts will have “no influence” on the ultimate decision.
The RDW issued a statement on Monday directed at those who have been sending messages to try and get the agency to clear Tesla’s premium partially automated driving system, marketed in the U.S. as the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) option. It’s not yet available for use in the Netherlands or Europe broadly.
“We thank everyone who has already done so and would like to ask everyone not to contact us about this,” the agency said. “It takes up unnecessary time for our customer service. Moreover, this will have no influence on whether or not the planning is met. Road safety is the RDW’s top priority: admission is only possible once the safety of the system has been convincingly demonstrated.”
The regulator said it will make a decision only after Elon Musk’s company shows that the technology meets the country’s stringent vehicle safety standards. The RDW has booked a schedule allowing Tesla to demonstrate its systems, and said it could decide on authorization as early as February.
Last week, Tesla posted on X encouraging its followers to contact RDW to express their wishes to have the systems approved.
The post claimed, “RDW has committed to granting Netherlands National approval in February 2026,” adding a message to “please contact them via link below to express your excitement & thank them for making this happen as soon as possible.” Tesla said other EU countries could then follow suit.
The RDW corrected Tesla on Monday, saying in a statement on its official website, that such approval is not guaranteed and had not been promised.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the U.S., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Tesla’s FSD-equipped vehicles in October following reports of widespread traffic violations tied to use of the systems.
The cars Tesla sells today, even with FSD Supervised engaged, require a human driver ready to brake or steer at any time.
For years, Musk has promised that Tesla customers would soon be able to turn their existing electric vehicles into robotaxis, capable of generating income for owners while they sleep or go on vacation, with a simple software update.
That hasn’t happened yet, and Tesla has since informed owners that future upgrades will require new hardware as well as software releases.
Tesla is testing a Robotaxi-brand ride-hailing service in Texas and elsewhere, but it includes human safety drivers or supervisors on board who either conduct the drives or manually intervene as needed. Musk has said the company aims to remove human driers in Austin, Texas, by the end of 2025.
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